Efforts to provide access to clean water have been ongoing since the beginning of civilization. In the United States however, the industrial revolution which led to a boom in population and pollution is what pressured local governments and private companies to spring into action to provide clean water. in 1755 the first public waterworks was established in Bethlehem, PA. Providence, RI, and New York, NY soon followed suit by establishing private water companies to provide clean water.

In 2010, clean water became a human right according to the United Nations General Assembly. Despite that, clean water continues to be inaccessible in major metropolitan areas across the United States. The Flint, MI water crisis became a national scandal in 2014 after insufficient water treatment exposed over 100,000 residents to elevated lead levels.

Does drinking water quality correlate with higher and lower income areas across the country? That is what I hoped to explore with these visualizations. I wanted to break down the data by state, and further by county. I want to make the visualizations understandable enough to benefit anyone ranging from the general public to activists, while at the same time being detailed enough to be used in an academic research project.

For the map we are presented with a visual of the United States, with states shaded by median income. The lower the income, the lighter the state. Each state has a dot on it as well, indicating a number of violations with their size, and color. State dots that are more red in color, and are larger in size indicate a higher number water violations. To the right of the map, we are presented with a circle chart. This chart indicates the states with serious water violations in comparison to their total population served. The larger the circle, the higher the population served of that state. States that are colored blue have no serious violations, states that are red have at least one. Our third and final visualization is a graph of median income and water violations by county. This is a different interpretation of the map in our first visualization, and more detailed as it indicates the information by county rather than state. Each circle indicates a county, and the circles are colored and sized by two quadrants: above and below average income. The average for number of violations is also indicated with an “average” line, and counties with a below average number of violations are below the average line in the blue shaded area. This visualization shows that some the highest income counties have the lowest number of violations.

I chose this set of visuals for several reasons. The map of the United States is an iconic and recognizable image for most Americans. This automatically grabs the viewer’s attention, because they may be more inclined to interact and see how many violations were in their home state; this adds a personal investment to the rest of the visualizations right away. I picked a circle chart initially, because I thought it complimented the map. I kept the design and chose red and blue because of the contrast in pigment and the way the size of the circles represented population. For our last visualization, there was a lot of data to represent with over 3,000 counties in the United States, and upwards of 2,000 violations per county. I chose to represent income with colors: yellow for above average income, and red for below average income. To make the income comparison easier and number of violations more readable, I placed the circles (counties) onto a vertical line. It is not realistic to find your county in this visualization, but it makes a point that lower income counties have a higher risk of dirty water.

Next steps are looking into what is actually in the water of counties with higher violations, and looking into the health effects of those contaminants on the general public.

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