Equity impacts
New water infrastructure could exacerbate existing disparities. Water augmentation programs can support the increased resilience of communities but may potentially impact EJ communities.
Recommendations
- Commit to, at a minimum, ensuring benefits are focused in EJ communities first.
- Focus on reducing these disparities through education and ensuring benefits target EJ communities first.
- Explore programs that would focus on education and shared decision making with EJ communities.
- A more explicit action or mention of focusing in improved relationships with indigenous communities and/or other EJ communities would be useful here.
- Find ways to increase outreach and education around programs and resilience benefits, as well as target ways to reduce impact for EJ communities.
Suggested edit to the draft
Suggest adding the following action: “Focus on targeted enrollment in low-income programs, more outreach, and free installation of low-flow equipment, etc."
Not adopted. No such action appears under WS-3; WS-1-1 covers fixture replacement generally.