ADDRESSING WATER QUALITY REPORTING ISSUES

Issues with water quality reporting through Consumer Confidence Reports (CCRS) are numerous (Cude, 2001; Means et al., 2002; Roy et al., 2015; Phetxumphou et al., 2016). The issue of public and policy-maker understanding of the reports has been studied and in general, public understanding is relatively low (Cude, 2001; Means et al., 2002; Roy et al., 2015; Phetxumphou et al., 2016). This becomes an issue when the public must be left to decide on the quality of the water used for drinking and other activities within their own homes, but possibly more concerning is that policy makers cannot understand these reports and might make decisions on faulty logic. Another issue addressed by Means (2002) is that is potentially caused by readability issues is that a low proportion of the public (17%) even reads these reports. So how can issues of readability and accessibility be addressed? The research presented used members of the public with at least a high school level education, which represented 87.1% of the population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019). Different styles of communications were assessed and opinions on methods to receive these reports were gathered from respondents. Initial findings will be reported.