Universal Access? Exploring everyday experiences of urban water insecurity in Newburgh, NY

Keywords: water insecurity, Global North, PFAs, environmental justice
Session Type: Virtual Lightning Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 42

Abstract

Over the past fifteen years a body of research has emerged that seeks to understand the scale and distribution of water insecurity in the United States, challenging the widespread imaginary of universal access in the Global North. Water insecurity can be understood as the lack of sufficient water of good quality to meet basic human needs, livelihoods, and ecosystem functions with high risk of losing access through water-linked disasters, conflicts, and precarious infrastructures. This research has been highly impactful, however, there remain too few examples of case studies which situate everyday experiences of water insecurity within broader social and political contexts. This paper will outline research designed to address this gap for feedback and comment. The proposed research utilizes a mixed-methodological approach to explore how water insecurity is experienced within and across households in Newburgh, a small city in upstate New York suffering from widespread PFAs, or "forever chemicals" contamination. The project seeks to explore how experiences of water insecurity impact the development of individual and collective political subjectivities and multiple water ontologies across diverse communities within the city, and how distributed forms of social, political, and economic power (re)produce conditions of water insecurity and enable and constrain articulations of water secure futures. It is the goal of this project to explore the conditions that produce water insecurity in the US, why these conditions persist, and how water secure futures for all might be achieved.