Doctoral Dissertation Research: How does groundwater contamination influence citizen-state relationships?

The majority of human populations rely on groundwater as a drinking water source. Groundwater contamination thus threatens global drinking water security. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) is an identified contaminant of concern that has polluted environmental resources such as groundwater, posing adverse human health effects. This project focuses on PFAS-contaminated groundwater to understand how well users, public officials, and other stakeholders manage and respond to the harm and uncertainty that PFAS in groundwater poses for well water access. This project deepens our understandings of how citizens perceive water toxicity, and investigates how those perceptions impact drinking water use practices and involvement in remediation efforts. It contributes to the training of a doctoral student in cultural and applied anthropology and its results disseminated to academic and non-academic audiences, including community groups and policymakers. The project develops a new theoretical framework to understand how social relationships and citizen-state relationships impact perceptions of risk and uncertainty in relation to groundwater. The investigators use a suite of mixed methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, and community meeting engagement to investigate the following research questions: 1) How is PFAS contamination shaping drinking water remediation efforts across different stakeholder groups? 2) How do well users and state agents perceive and understand contaminated groundwater that affects well water quality, including in terms of risk and uncertainty? 3) How do well users and state agents respond to contaminated groundwater that affects well water quality? Results from this research will help to understand how PFAS contamination is impacting groundwater management and how government response to PFAS is organized to address residential concerns about well water use and other environmental protection concerns. It contributes to scientific cultural anthropological theories surrounding citizen-state relationships and relationships among individuals and their environments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.