Every Water Right, Measured

What the court said

On September 4, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by residents of Jackson, Mississippi, against their city over lead in their drinking water (Sterling v. City of Jackson). The residents argued that drinking contaminated water, and being told it was safe, violated their right to bodily integrity.

The court called the harms they described "grievous." It still found that they "do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right." It also found no constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis. The residents can still pursue other claims, elect different officials or ask their legislatures to act.

That's a ruling about what the Constitution says. It isn't the last word on what people are owed.

What we say

We say clean water is a human right. We're in good company.

On March 15, 1962, President Kennedy sent Congress a message on protecting the consumer. He named four rights: the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose and the right to be heard. In 1985 the United Nations wrote the needs behind eight consumer rights into its Guidelines for Consumer Protection. And in 2010, the UN General Assembly recognized the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right.

A court can say what the Constitution doesn't guarantee. It can't make a family's water safer, or tell them what's in it. That part is up to us.

Water is not a political issue. It's a human issue.

Rights are promised. Few are measured.

The world keeps score of what it values. In 1990, the United Nations began ranking every nation on health, education and income, and the Human Development Index changed how governments talk about progress.

But a right without a number is a promise without a receipt. Today, no one can say, county by county, how fully those eight rights are honored, whether it's getting better, or who's being left behind.

The AquaRights Index™ is that number.

Water rights have no scoreboard

The data exists. It just doesn't add up to an answer a family, a school board or a city council can use.

1. The record is in pieces

No one puts it together. Violations sit in one federal database, water bills in thousands of utility rate sheets, school lead tests in district files, pollution in another agency's maps. No one adds them up for a single place.

2. The map can go dark

Public tools aren't permanent. On February 5, 2025, EPA took its EJScreen mapping tool offline. Communities, regulators and companies lost the same map on the same day. A measure built on primary records can't be switched off.

3. No one asks the people

The record counts pipes and permits. It never asks residents whether they trust their water, can afford it or feel heard. The distance between the record and what people believe is where problems go unnoticed.

4. Changed places have no baseline

The before is rarely written down. When a plant is built or a spill happens, a community has to prove what changed. Without a baseline, it can't.

What gets measured gets honored

A right that's measured can be compared, tracked and defended. A right that isn't can be ignored without anyone noticing.

So we built the measure. The AquaRights Index™ scores all eight rights from 0 to 100, in every county and ZIP code, every year, from the public record. Beside it, we publish Community Confidence: what residents tell us at AquaCivics™ tables. The distance between the two is the Trust Gap.

The record, and the people, side by side.

Two kinds of evidence. Three numbers.

Every county and ZIP code gets three published numbers. They're kept apart on purpose: the headline stays comparable everywhere and back through time, and residents' answers are never diluted into it.

1. The headline: AquaRights Index™. Built only from the public record: violations, water bills, enforcement, school testing, pollution near the source. Comparable in every county, every year.
2. Beside it: Community Confidence. What residents report about each right, from the same eight questions asked at every AquaCivics™ table, weighted to match the community.
3. Between them: the Trust Gap. How far confidence sits from the record. A Blind Spot means people trust more than the record supports. A Trust Deficit means the reverse.

The Index uses 8 rights, weighted equally; 21 public-record indicators; scores from 0 to 100 against fixed benchmarks; and a 90% uncertainty band on every number.

No right can hide behind the others. The eight right scores are combined with a geometric mean, the same way the UN builds its Human Development Index. A strong score on one right can't paper over a failing one: seven rights at 80 and one at 1 score 46, not 70.

Benchmarks never move between editions, so the record can be rebuilt back to 2010. Communities where the change has already come get a baseline too.

Every right, on the record

Each right is scored from primary public records. Where no public record exists, Aquagenuity® collects it through audits that two people score independently.

Tiers tell you how complete the record is. The tiers follow the logic the UN uses for its development-goal indicators. Tier I rights have national data today. Tier II rights count at full weight, carry wider bands, and move up as Guardians and audits fill the record. Education is Tier II because school results aren't yet published in one place, which is exactly where Guardians of H2O™ starts.

One county, read

SAMPLE · Illustrative, not a real place.

Sample County: AquaRights Index™ 48 (90% band 42 to 52 · Band 4, Limited). Community Confidence Index: 42.

• Blind Spot · Safety · +45. Residents trust their tap water far more than the record supports. This is the finding to lead with.
• Signal · Heard · −27. People feel less heard than the meeting record shows. The band crosses −20, so it's watched, not yet called.
• Weakest right · Redress · 25. When water goes wrong here, the record shows little that makes it right.

Every finding comes with something to do. Each finding is tied to a public number and points to a table to host and a question to take to the governing body. A Trust Gap reading is called only when its whole band clears ±20, so a noisy sample can't raise a false alarm.

A measure no one can buy

1. Data, never verdicts. The Index describes how fully each right is honored. It never declares a place's water good or bad. Lab results and the AquaScore™ report what's in the water; the Index reports how the rights around it are kept.
2. The record leads. The people stand beside it. Community Confidence is never blended into the headline. It gets a number of its own, so residents' answers keep their full weight.
3. It's never too late to be scored. Fixed benchmarks let us rebuild the record back to 2010, so communities where the change has already come still get a baseline.

Our commitments: independence is written into the method.

• No sponsor, customer or utility sets the method or sees a score before it's published.
• The code and data are open. Anyone can rerun the Index and get the same numbers.
• An outside statistical audit before the first edition, published in full.
• Every utility sees its record data 30 days before publication and can correct it.
• We start with schools, where the record is thinnest, then campuses, companies and cities.

Check our work

The first edition: The AquaRights Report™, 2027. Georgia first, then the nation. Guardian Season (March 15 to June 5, 2027) gathers the first Community Confidence answers, and the first AquaRights Index™ edition launches at Climate Week in the fall.

• Audit the method. Economists and statisticians: every formula, weight and benchmark is published. Test it.
• Open the record. Utilities and governments: publish what's missing, and use your right of reply.
• Close the gaps. Schools and communities: host a table, test your water, become a Guardian.

Get the eight rights at aquagenuity.com/rights. Become a Guardian. It's free.

Sources

1. Sterling v. City of Jackson, No. 24-60370 (5th Cir. Sept. 4, 2026). Reported by Mississippi Today, Sept. 4, 2026: https://mississippitoday.org/2026/09/04/jackson-lawsuit-lead-water-appeal/ · Analysis: Arnold & Porter, Sept. 2026: https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/advisories/2026/09/sterling-v-city-of-jackson-and-the-limits-of-substantive-due-process-in-environmental-harm-cases
2. President John F. Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress on Protecting the Consumer Interest, March 15, 1962.
3. UN General Assembly, Consumer protection, A/RES/70/186 (2015; first adopted 1985).
4. UN General Assembly, The human right to water and sanitation, A/RES/64/292 (July 28, 2010).
5. UNDP, Human Development Report Technical Notes (2025).
6. Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, EPA removal of EJScreen (Feb. 5, 2025).
7. UN Statistics Division, IAEG-SDGs tier classification.
8. The full method is in AquaRights Index™: Method and Algorithm, v1.0.

The AquaRights Index™, The AquaRights Report™, AquaScore™, AquaCivics™ and Guardians of H2O™ are trademarks of Aquagenuity, Inc. Aquagenuity® is a registered trademark. All other marks belong to their respective owners. © 2026 Aquagenuity, Inc. · aquagenuity.com