Access to adequate and safe drinking water and sanitation services is imperative to human development, health, and well-being. The belief that water and sanitation insecurity is a problem of lower-income countries is seemingly supported by international and national statistics framing access to adequate and safe drinking water and sanitation services as universal in high-income countries including the United States. Yet, a growing body of literature is challenging these statistics with in-depth case studies outlining populations across the United States facing water and sanitation insecurity. In my dissertation, I use a political ecology framework and feminist epistemology to analyze both the mechanisms of denial that create water and sanitation insecurity in the United States and what makes the resulting insecurity invisible in national and international statistics. For each research question I conducted in-depth, qualitative analysis of secondary interview data with policy and water sector representatives, local nonprofit organization staff, and residents lacking access to water and/or sanitation services across five regions. I analyzed how respondents across groups and regions defined their relationships with water, how infrastructure was used to connect and disconnect residents from access, and how the framing of problems and solutions related to water insecurity compared across groups and how this contributed to the maintenance or mitigation of water insecurity. My analysis revealed how historical marginalization has led to modern exclusion through layered costs of access and municipal underbounding. I make the case for community-based approaches to solving water and sanitation insecurity in the United States that can account for the intertwined nature of positionality and power in determining how knowledge is constructed, how problems are framed, and what solutions are recommended.
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