Consumers Again Praise Utilities, But Work Remains

Abstract

Since 2020, AWWA has commissioned an annual study of public confidence in drinking water. This study has provided valuable context and insight into how the public feels about water utilities.

The numbers could be even better. Evidence shows that proactive communication from utilities works. Those who recall receiving recent communication (other than a bill) from their utility gave higher ratings to their utilities and their water on many different metrics, and we’ve seen this for several years in a row.

It is likely proactive communication will better instill confidence than letting someone else take the narrative. Although we can only demonstrate correlation and not causation, there's reason to think that hearing information from a trusted source helps increase confidence.

Another area for improvement is closing the gap in ratings among Hispanic and Black respondents compared with White respondents, although Hispanic respondents’ ratings edged higher overall this year. This gap presents an opportunity to ensure all groups are receiving the same level of service as well as further targeted outreach and education.

Other SDWA-related questions were harder to interpret. When presented with the statement “The Safe Drinking Water Act has effectively regulated drinking water for the past 50 years,” while considerably more agreed (55%) than disagreed (14%), nearly a third (30%) did not know or had no opinion. Given the complexity of federal laws and regulations, these results are not so surprising and likely represent unfamiliarity with SDWA regulations. This suggests another topic utilities could further educate their consumers about.

Similar uncertainty was seen in responses to statements such as “Water utilities will show resilience in light of extreme events and climate change” and “Water utilities are prepared to face the challenges that they will see in the future.” This uncertainty represents key opportunities to talk about current activities and future plans with the public.

Utilities are encouraged to review all the detailed results and use them to gather insights on the national picture of public confidence and use that as context for inquiry and engagement in their own communities. We encourage readers to view the press release, infographic, and AWWA's Value of Water page.

Throughout the year, we receive questions on how the survey was conducted. We hired a top polling firm, Morning Consult (MC), who walks us through the whole process for each study, making sure we ask questions free from avoidable bias, and seeks to provide meaningful insights. The survey is nationally representative per MC's methodology used in hundreds of other surveys. The more than 2,000 respondents did not know the survey's sponsor and had self-reported, before taking the survey, that they were served by a water utility.

This survey also has some limits, of course. It is nationally representative by key demographics, but water utilities themselves are not distributed in exactly the same ways as customers are. Also, we lack information about the compliance history or other key characteristics about the utilities serving these customers. Instead, this is a perceptions survey and relies on what the public thinks and feels about the utility.