Advancing Equity in Wastewater Adaptation to Climate Change in Florida

• In Event: 50620 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Environmental Inequalities and Harm 2

Abstract

Onsite waste treatment systems (OWTS) are prone to fail due to governance, system, and climate factors which puts nearly a quarter of US homes that utilize OWTS at risk. We plan to run Cox proportional hazard regressions with propensity score matching for appropriate system comparisons to identify disparities in OWTS failure in Florida as well as use climate modelling to examine future risk. Our study includes parcel-level data from Zillow for over 2.6 million homes combined with OWTS-specific data focused on 2010-2022. We pair our parcel-level data with sociodemographic data from the 2010 Decennial Census and the American Community Survey (2018-2022) 5-year estimates. Additionally, we include incorporation status and both county-level governance factors (e.g., elections held) and OWTS regulations (e.g., mandatory OWTS inspections). For environmental factors, we include data such as the number of wet days and soil saturation in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. These data showcase parcels’ environmental conditions both a month and three months prior to failure. We predict that parcels which experienced heavy precipitation events, a high number of wet days, lack required system inspections, built before 1983, and that are unincorporated to have higher rates of failure. Ultimately, we aim to identify which typologies of failure (e.g., infrastructure and hydrologic) potentially coalesce to increase the likelihood of OWTS failure. Our results also have the potential to inform climate change mitigation policies that could help prevent public health disasters, especially with consideration for the changing political and environmental climates in Florida and beyond.

Authors

• Maura Allaire

• Ricardo Rubio, Arizona State University

• Mari Tye

• Arezoo R Nasab

• Thomas Hopson