A Stanford engineer is developing a modeling tool that could help small and under-resourced water systems across the United States find affordable ways to fix drinking water violations, according to a report by Phys.org.
Khalid Osman, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, is leading the effort. He studies water management, conservation, and community access to clean water. His concern is straightforward: when water problems go unaddressed, residents pay the price.
"Often, problems go neglected, and then consumers have to contend with drinking water that might not be of the highest quality," Osman said.
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, water system managers are required to notify consumers when testing reveals violations of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. Not all violations are emergencies. They range from acute health risks, such as E. coli contamination or high levels of lead and copper, to less serious issues like missed reporting deadlines. But even minor violations can signal deeper problems that need fixing.
When a violation occurs, managers generally have two choices: pay for system upgrades or combine infrastructure, operations, or management with a nearby water system that has more resources. Both options are expensive. Weighing the trade-offs is complex and time-consuming. For many communities, that complexity leads to delay or no action at all.
The EPA does offer spreadsheets to help managers calculate the costs of different options. But when Osman and his lab members spoke with managers from water systems of all sizes, they kept hearing the same complaint: the EPA tools are not user-friendly, and many managers lack the software needed to run the calculations. The problem is especially common in small communities where the water utility is run like what Osman described as a "mom-and-pop shop" or by someone who manages the water system as a second job.
Osman saw an opening. Public datasets already exist on household income, the age of water treatment infrastructure, water system boundaries, and other factors that affect a community's ability to bring its system into compliance. The question was whether those datasets could be linked together in a useful way.
"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, housed in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, to build the modeling tools. The funding allowed the team to deepen its relationships with water system managers, water board members, community advocacy organizations, engineering consulting firms, and other consultants who work directly with water systems.
As feedback came in, the researchers expanded their original vision. Rather than build a tool designed only for water managers, they began working toward something broader, a platform that multiple types of users and stakeholders could access and use.
The work addresses a gap that has persisted for years in water system oversight. Many of the communities most likely to face drinking water violations are also the least equipped, financially and technically, to fix them. Osman's approach tries to lower the barrier by making existing public information easier to use, rather than requiring communities to gather new data or hire outside experts just to understand their options.
No launch date for the tool has been announced.
