Human Right to Water Act and drinking water compliance: A synthetic control approach

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of California’s Human Right to Water Act (HR2W) on drinking water compliance using a synthetic control approach. We construct a counterfactual from other U.S. states to estimate the 2016 policy’s causal effect. The results show a significant decline in the enforcement priority of public water systems (PWSs) in California relative to the synthetic counterpart. Robustness checks confirm that this decline is not driven by confounding factors like federal regulations. These findings provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of targeted water governance policies.