“Oftentimes, problems go neglected, and then consumers have to contend with drinking water that might not be of the highest quality,” said Khalid Osman, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford who studies water management, conservation, and community access to clean water.

Water managers must notify consumers when testing reveals violations of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Not all violations mean the water is unsafe to drink. They range from acute health risks, such as E. coli or high levels of contaminants like lead and copper, to less serious violations, like missing reporting deadlines.

Water system managers typically have two options for improving their systems to prevent further violations: pay for upgrades, or combine infrastructure, operations, or management with a nearby system that has the resources to address safety issues. Both options can be costly, and weighing the tradeoffs can be complex and time-consuming, leaving many communities with no choice but to delay action or do nothing.

The EPA offers spreadsheets that can help water managers calculate the costs of different upgrade options, but when Osman and his lab members talked to managers from water systems of all sizes, they heard the same story: The EPA tools aren’t user-friendly, and many people don’t have the software needed to run calculations. This is especially true in many small communities where utilities are run by a “mom-and-pop shop” or someone with a day job who manages the water system on the side, said Osman.

Osman saw an opportunity to integrate existing public datasets on household income, the age of water-treatment infrastructure, water system boundaries, and other information that could affect a community’s ability to bring its system into compliance.

“If we could get all the data to talk to each other, what would it tell us?” Osman said. “And then how could we use that to create solutions?”

In 2025, Osman and Greg Pierce, senior director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at UCLA, received funding from the Stanford Sustainability Accelerator, based in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, to build modeling tools that could help water managers find the best solutions for their communities.

Osman and Pierce continued building relationships with system managers, water board members, community advocacy organizations, engineering consulting firms, and consultants who work with water systems. As they gathered feedback, the researchers expanded their vision: Rather than build a tool just for water managers, they wanted to create something that various groups could use to inform their work on water system improvements.

The team was also determined to find an approach that would work at scale across the country.

“The more small systems we can help make these decisions, the more efficient water systems broadly across the nation will be,” Osman said.

The collaboration with EPIC helped move the project from an idea to a prototype in less than a year. The team demoed the tools for system managers and other stakeholders during the spring of 2026 and is now working to refine and release free, public versions of the tools in 2027. 

Pierce, who has worked on several projects related to mapping and fixing noncompliant water systems, said collaboration across disciplines and institutions is key to developing solutions that can work on a national scale.

“A lot of people have estimated the size of the problem, but not a lot of people have estimated how the solution could be implemented and what the cost of it would be, to motivate a final push to make sure everyone has safe drinking water in the United States,” Pierce said.

Osman said he hopes the team’s work to help communities improve their water systems inspires other people to address related issues, such as limited water supplies and contaminants like microplastics.

“Our work can be part of creating national dialogue around having clean, healthy, and affordable drinking water for everybody,” he said.