The most vulnerable quartile has the fewest water violations. State by state, it flips.
A study called “Social Inequities in NPDES Violations in the U.S.” filed data and code on Zenodo yesterday. No paper yet. I went to the raw file.
55,718 census tracts. 438,272 facilities. 5,928,338 violations. Effluent ones, a limit actually exceeded: 560,436, or 9.5%. The other 90% are monitoring and reporting.
Its own model: more vulnerable tracts get more of both, +0.112 per SD of SVI, about 12%.
But the SVI averages 16 indicators, and its own tables show the parts disagree. Strongest positive: mobile homes +0.265, then disability +0.166, poverty +0.162. Other way: multi-unit housing -0.136, limited English -0.082, minority -0.066.
The composite rises. Race and language fall. Poverty and housing carry it.
Five states hold 65% of the 5.9M; West Virginia alone 35%. And the most vulnerable quartile has the fewest violations per person, 17 per 1,000 against 43 in the third. Within states, 28 of 43 flip.
Caveat: not peer reviewed, one specification, association not cause. The deposit's non-effluent tables for those 16 indicators print numbers identical to the effluent ones, so treat those as copy-paste.
Data: 10.5281/zenodo.22818328