The U.S. Water Access Gap: Why Millions of Americans Still Lack Running Water

More than two million Americans live without running water, indoor plumbing, or safe sanitation in their own homes right now — not decades ago, and not only in places without modern infrastructure nearby. A 2019 national report from the US Water Alliance, DigDeep, and Michigan State University put a number on a gap that federal data collection had never fully mapped, and it's the backdrop for why NuRich treats "clean water access" as a goal still being built toward, not a box already checked.

Where the Two-Million Figure Comes From

"Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States: A National Action Plan," released in November 2019, was the first attempt to comprehensively map water poverty across the country using census and utility data alongside on-the-ground research. It found that more than two million people lack access to running water, indoor plumbing, and safe sanitation in their homes — a population the report's authors note the federal government had never systematically counted before. The gap isn't evenly spread: it concentrates in specific regions, including Native American communities (Navajo Nation households are disproportionately represented), the colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border, rural Appalachia, and parts of the Mississippi Delta and Central Valley.

What "Lacking Access" Looks Like Day to Day

The report describes households hauling water from a shared source, relying on wells contaminated by agricultural or industrial runoff, or using outdoor sanitation because indoor plumbing was never installed or has failed beyond what a household can afford to repair. These aren't hypothetical edge cases in the data — they're documented, geographically specific populations that a national utility system has, for various historical and funding reasons, never fully reached. The report frames this explicitly as an infrastructure and investment problem, not a natural consequence of geography or climate.

Why a Bottle Company Cares About Plumbing

NuRich's long-term goal is building toward a purified-water facility, and the water-access gap is the plainest illustration of why that goal exists: reliable water access in the U.S. is not yet universal, and treating it as solved everywhere would be inaccurate. To be direct about where things stand today — NuRich does not operate a treatment facility right now, and this post isn't describing one. What is active today is the company's giving model: at least 1% of sales goes to adopting and cleaning up rivers, starting with the Mulberry River in Winder, Georgia, on the reasoning that healthier source water is the first, cheapest stage of any future treatment system.

What the Report Recommends

The plan's core recommendations center on better data (the federal government still doesn't track water access at the household level in a standardized way), targeted federal and state investment in the specific regions where the gap concentrates, and treating water access as infrastructure policy rather than an issue left to individual utilities or counties to solve on their own budgets. None of that is a quick fix, which the report's own authors acknowledge — but naming the scale of the problem in one comprehensive count was itself new.

Shop NuRich

Every NuRich purchase supports river adoption and cleanup, including at the 18 oz NuRich Original ($14.99) and the 32 oz NuRich Insulated Bottle ($29.99). Browse the full lineup at livenurich.com.

This post describes a national infrastructure report and NuRich's own long-term mission; it does not claim NuRich operates a water-treatment facility today, and the two-million figure and regional detail come from the cited report, not from NuRich-specific data.

Sources: US Water Alliance, DigDeep, and Michigan State University, "Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States: A National Action Plan" (November 2019) — uswateralliance.org/resources/closing-the-water-access-gap-in-the-united-states-a-national-action-plan • NuRich giving program — at least 1% of sales to river adoption and cleanup, starting with the Mulberry River, Winder, GA