Environmental injustices have widely been recorded and investigated since the 1970s in the United States. However, environmental justice (EJ) studies on freshwater ecosystems are few and mostly at the local scale, in part because of the difficulty in obtaining sufficient spatial and temporal data. In fact, it is not even known whether current water quality monitoring is adequate to understand national-scale water quality in an EJ context. To fill this knowledge gap, we quantified the relationship between community demographics near lakes and lake water quality monitoring. We used two large publicly-available datasets for the conterminous U.S., one with the frequency and location of lake water quality samples (LAGOS-US) and the other containing racial and ethnic population data (U.S. Census). Using water clarity measures, we found that lakes in communities of color and Hispanic communities were both about 3 times less likely to be monitored than lakes in White and non-Hispanic communities, and 7 and 19 times (respectively) less likely to have long-term monitoring data (≥ 15 years) compared to White and non-Hispanic lakes. Widespread inequity in lake monitoring can leave marginalized communities near lakes vulnerable to environmental hazards when those lakes are not regularly monitored for early detection of negative environmental outcomes. It is not enough to expand freshwater monitoring; programs must consider human population demographics in their sampling design to achieve management outcomes that are equitable for communities of all racial and ethnic compositions.

Primary Presenter: Jessica Díaz Vázquez, Michigan State University; University of Maryland, Baltimore County (jessica.dv405@gmail.com)

Authors:

Jessica Díaz Vázquez, Michigan State University; University of Maryland, Baltimore County  (jessica.dv405@gmail.com)

Ian McCullough, Michigan State University  (immccull@gmail.com)

Maggie Haite, Michigan State University  (haitemar@msu.edu)

Patricia Soranno, Michigan State University  (soranno@msu.edu)

Kendra Spence Cheruvelil, Michigan State University  (ksc@msu.edu)