Interesting Study about Water Affordability

The following link is a study done by Elizabeth Mack at Michigan State University.  One of teh issues that arises is that in many places, especially rural places, affordability of water services may be a future challenge.  It is an issue i spent some time talking about in my forthcoming book.  I think this article expands on that idea.  The threshold is 4.5% of monthly income for water and sewer services.  If you have a good income, this is not a problem, and you can afford to pay for the many upgrades needed.  If you live in an area that is far more challenged with joblessness and low incomes (the South, rural areas, then the need to pay for upgrades and renewal will be more difficult.  The map shows this.  Keep in mind that many of these same places had FHA, WPA (1930s) and others sources of free or near free money pay for their infrastructure initially, and the trend has not been to increase rates for renewal.  IT creates a whole new crisis to go with the infrastructure condition crisis in some of these places

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169488&type=printable