Drinking Water in Louisiana: The Crisis Hiding Beneath the Surface, Part 1. Why Rural Drinking Water Systems Are Struggling

September 11, 2026

By, Leela Prodhan*

Introduction

Louisiana’s relationship with water is unique among states due to a variety of significant challenges, including coastal land loss, saltwater intrusion, flooding, and hurricanes. Yet one key water resource challenge that is less often discussed is the maintenance and upgrade of drinking water systems in rural Louisiana.

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), enacted by Congress in 1974, categorizes public water systems into two classes based on type and size: community water systems and non-community water systems. Community water systems serve the same people year-round. These systems serve residents in cities, small towns, and mobile-home parks. Non-community water systems, on the other hand, serve the public, but not the same people year-round.

Rural drinking water systems are classified as small public water systems. Small public water systems can be divided into three categories based on the number of people they serve: very small (500 or fewer people), small (501–3,300 people), and medium/small (3,301–10,000 people). Small public water systems account for more than 92 percent of the 51,000 community water systems in the United States. Small public water systems face many financial and operational challenges due to aging infrastructure, lack of maintenance, and insufficient funding to improve systems and related technology. Those in Louisiana are no exception.

Louisiana Drinking Water System Challenges

Hundreds of water systems in rural Louisiana are, for various reasons, in critical condition and in dire need of repair. Approximately 58% of Louisiana’s water systems were constructed before 1960. Around that time, many drinking water systems were built with cast iron pipes or galvanized steel. Cast iron pipes have an average lifespan of 75 to 100 years, making them relatively durable, but they are particularly susceptible to corrosion and cracking. Galvanized steel, on the other hand, has a service life of only 40 to 50 years and is prone to corrosion once the zinc coating wears down.

Not only are drinking water systems in Louisiana nearing or exceeding the end of their service life, but the state’s humid climate, shifting soil, high water tables, and other environmental factors also accelerate corrosion and deterioration of the pipes. Many systems are also breaking down due to years of delayed maintenance, largely due to rising maintenance costs. Often, by the time systems or parts of them are seen for scheduled maintenance and repairs, the parts used to construct these older systems are no longer used, which necessitates the replacement of the entire drinking water system. Additionally, there is not enough funding to keep the state’s drinking water systems afloat. With small populations spread across broad geographic areas, many rural communities lack the funding to update their drinking water systems. The state also lacks funding, preventing it from helping to fix infrastructure when rural utilities fall short.

How do these issues impact communities and individual households? For one, many chemicals—such as nitrates, dioxins, and hydrogen sulfides—can easily infiltrate water systems through cracked pipes or other infrastructure issues, making the water brown, murky, and unsafe to drink, sometimes leading to severe health issues. These chemicals can enter drinking water sources through run-off from industrial sites, such as refineries and meat and poultry processing plants. In 2022, Louisiana ranked fourth among states in an EPA report for the number of toxic substances dumped into waterways by weight. Corrosion from the pipes themselves can also change the water’s chemistry, the number and types of minerals and metals found in drinking water, as well as the water’s color and taste.

Boil water advisories reflect these issues. Boil water advisories are issued when water pressure drops, typically due to a pipe break, allowing chemicals and other harmful substances to enter the water system. This happens more often than one may guess. Each year, Louisiana experiences 1,600 to 1,700 boil-water advisories statewide.In the last six years, there have been over 10,000 boil water advisories in the state (though the number in rural Louisiana alone is unknown).

Louisiana Department of Health’s Drinking Water Grade System

To capture the broader conditions of these systems, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) developed a statewide grading system. In Act 98 of the 2021 Regular Session, the Louisiana Legislature authorized the LDH’s Safe Drinking Water Program to establish a grading system to evaluate the quality, safety, and performance of state and community water systems, thereby enhancing and supporting water sustainability for Louisiana residents. The LDH utilizes the following seven standards to assign a letter grade to community water systems: (1) federal water quality, (2) state water quality, (3) financial sustainability, (4) operation and maintenance, (5) infrastructure, (6) customer satisfaction, and (7) secondary contaminants (iron and manganese).

In 2024, the LDH gave 81% of community water systems A or B grades. However, 115 of the state’s water systems, most of which are in rural areas, received D or F-grades. The grades of all community public water systems can be found here. Grades don’t necessarily indicate whether water is safe to drink. Instead, the grade of a city’s drinking water system encapsulates and measures the system’s overall financial health, infrastructure quality, and long-term viability. While the LDH’s grading system helps track the stability of state water systems, many rural communities remain unable to fund the improvements needed to move above D and F grades.

Part 2 will explore how this crisis affects Louisiana communities firsthand and what it would truly take to fix them.

* Leela Prodhan is currently a MPH in Environmental Health Sciences Candidate at the Tulane University Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She was a Law & Policy Research Intern at the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy in late 2025.