Drinking water service provision poses many technical and financial challenges. Local communities that lack fiscal capacity to make necessary infrastructure investments struggle to maintain safe water supplies. This project aims to understand what shapes differential service outcomes, and how to overcome these challenges.

In highly institutionally fragmented urban areas such as the Houston, TX metropolitan region, there are thousands of independently regulated water utilities that rely upon regional water resources, technical labor supply, and economic capacity. In collaboration with Dr. Robert Greer at the Texas A&M Bush School and Dr. Tima Moldogaziev at the Penn State University School of Public Policy, this project addresses questions such as:

How do local socio-economic conditions constrain the ability to make necessary infrastructure investments and exacerbate service inequities?

What are the drivers of institutional failure in special water districts?

and forthcoming work on special district performance.