America's water,
exposed.
of 0 tracked, each scored 0–10 on documented evidence
The toll
Severity
Every dot is an issue.
Colored by severity, from Critical (9–10) to Low (0–3). Hollow dots are resolved or stabilized. Click any dot to read its dossier.
Geography
Where the water is failing.
States shaded by their most severe active issue; circles count the issues touching each state. Multi-state issues, such as the Colorado River basin, shade every state they touch.
What kind of problem
Thirteen ways water goes wrong.
Active issues per category. Each tile takes the color of its most severe issue. Categories are never ranked against each other.
Root cause
Broken pipes, or bad water?
Every issue gets one primary cause: the infrastructure, the water itself, both, or the money and governance behind it.
Timeline
When the evidence landed.
The price tag
What it costs.
The largest dollar figures reported in the sources: settlements, funding gaps, capital needs and debts. Each figure is shown as reported, on a log scale (each gridline is 10× the last). Figures measure different things and are not added together.
The wider picture
Most systems had no health-based violation.
This tracker only records systems with documented problems. EPA's compliance counts put them in proportion. No violation is not the same as no problem: aging pipes, finances, contaminants without a federal limit and unreported monitoring never show up as violations.
Financial picture
Who pays, and what's missing.
Rates, household bills, capital need and funding, debt and affordability, exactly as the sources report them. Unlike figures are never added or averaged together, and anything not reported is shown as missing, never as zero.
Utilities under strain
Who can't pay for their water.
Business-model risk for each issue. "Severe" includes confirmed bond default or court receivership; "Watch" means material financial pressure without confirmed distress.
Where things stand
Fixing it, or still failing?
Current status of every tracked issue, as reported in its most recent source.
The full roll-up
Every issue, one wall.
Grouped by category and ranked within each. The big number is the severity score; the text is the headline measure from the source.
What this is, and isn't