Sustaining Adequate Public Water Supply: The Challenges Ahead

Public water supply is an essential service traditionally given a high priority in the United States, but sustaining adequate supply will confront a variety of future challenges. All the traditional challenges remain and continue to intensify, including the difficulties of balancing supply and demand in an environment of increasing water scarcity; protecting water supplies from an ever-expanding range of potential contaminants and activities; and maintaining adequate managerial capacity for necessary planning, investing in required facilities, and conducting operations. The challenges of the future will also include non-traditional concerns such as the threat of terrorism directed toward water supplies and climate change that may adversely impact existing supplies as well as make development of new supplies more difficult in some locations. The expanded challenge list also includes more restrictive policy within the institutional framework that controls water use. The historical view that abundant and low-cost water supply had superior status relative to competing water uses has been replaced by one where efforts to expand water supply are viewed more critically. This development has resulted from a rise in environmental values and the associated changes in water management priorities. Sustaining adequate public water supply continues to be an important component of public policy, but the new and intensified challenges confronting water supply managers create a substantially altered environment for future decision making.