Water and Wall Street

How water infrastructure finance drives the size of our water bills, who can afford them, and the geography of urban landscapes.

“Water crises” have emerged in the US with increasing regularity, from Flint, MI to Jackson, MS. Simultaneously, the rise in water bills for the past decade has far outpaced the rising cost of groceries, gas, or electricity, leading more Americans to add water to the growing list of their unaffordable basic necessities. Water and Wall Street by Martin Doyle, Lauren Patterson, and Erika Smull uncovers how the seemingly arcane world of infrastructure finance underlies these and other water trends in US cities, and how water infrastructure shapes the most basic landscape of cities and suburbs.

The authors begin by describing the basics of how water infrastructure works, and more importantly, how it is financed by municipal bonds, the backbone of urban finance. They then trace the history of municipal bonds for water from the founding of Philadelphia in the eighteenth century to the bankruptcy of Detroit in the twenty-first. Along the way, they also explore financial geography: how water bills, water affordability, and the peculiarities of infrastructure finance create distinct geographies of water capital. Finally, they take a speculative look at alternative future states for our cities, our infrastructure, and our water.