Media discourse on ageing water infrastructure

Abstract

Urban infrastructure in the United States is ageing, but media portrayal of this phenomena has been insufficient. Failures such as water main breaks are a daily occurrence in many cities. In addition, citizens are regularly reminded of the costs through increases in water and sewer rates. To explore media discourse on this issue, a content analysis of print media articles on water main breaks (Breaks), and water and sewer rate increases (Rates) for the period 1999–2012 was conducted. The analysis of approximately 500 randomly drawn articles on each topic found that media coverage of water infrastructure is an episodic affair with little attention to ongoing issues. Rates articles contained more details and a focus on governance, while Breaks articles addressed business concerns and were concentrated in older cities. The article concludes that media stories are not providing sufficient information to serve the needs of democratic governance of urban infrastructure issues.

Keywords::

• water infrastructure
• water main breaks
• rate increase
• content analysis
• ageing infrastructure

Acknowledgements

A trial version of LabArchives was made available to us at no-cost by LabArchives, LLC to store and share documents during the course of the study. Veena Raman and two anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. The infrastructure grades are modeled after school and college grades that range from A (highest) to F (lowest). Therefore, a D/D- falls on the lower side of the grade spectrum. The marginal improvement from D- to D was a result of short-term federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

^2. Formerly American Association of Retired Persons, AARP, Inc. is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the U.S.

^3. Although wastewater is the preferred term in the scientific literature, news media commonly uses the term ‘sewer.’

^4. The website is supported by the PVC Pipe Association, an organization that represents the interests of the manufacturers of polyvinyl chloride (plastic) pipes, and advocates their use over the commonly used metallic pipes.

^5. The website is part of a data-driven journalism project run by the School of Journalism and Media Studies at the San Diego State University in California.

^6. For the purposes of this article, utility officials, though highly knowledgeable on topics under study, are not classified as experts since they represent the agency responsible for the infrastructure. Industry consultants, university professors, federal or state agency officials and other researchers representing think-tanks and non-profit organizations are classified as experts.

^7. Tone was judged subjectively, with disagreements between coders discussed and resolved.

^8. There was no statistically significant difference in the number of quotes between Breaks and Rates articles that highlighted the ageing infrastructure issue (t = 0.83, p>0.05).

^9. Administrations run by Republican governors are associated with reductions in aid to local governments, primarily those of large cities. This may be attributed to their support from suburban voters (Weir, 1996). Therefore a positive correlation between Republican governors and higher number of Breaks articles was hypothesized.

^10. Pocketbook issues are those that financially affect citizens. Most common ones include taxes, food, education, etc.

^11. New York requires the issuance of a boil water advisory if the water main break lasts more than four hours. Other states have similar regulations. Though most main breaks affect a small section of the city, a recent event presented the far end of the spectrum this issue represents. A break in a 10-ft wide pipe supplying water to 2 million residents in the Greater Boston area in 2010 resulted in a boil water advisory that lasted 3 days.

^12. For large-scale failures such as the 2010 Boston water main break, a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation would result in $1.25 ^* 869,565 households ^* 3 days = $3.26 million in expenditure by residents.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Hudson River Estuary Program of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation via the New York State Environmental Protection Fund, and the United States Geological Survey through funding authorized under Section 104(b) of the Water Resources Research Act.