PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Water
Sec. Water and Human Systems
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frwa.2025.1685464
This article is part of the Research TopicPluralizing Water Knowledge for Inclusive Water Governance: Meaning-making, Co-creation and TransdisciplinarityView all articles
Public-Private Partnerships in U.S. Rural Water Infrastructure: Challenges, Opportunities, and Needs
Provisionally accepted
- Brigham Young University, Provo, United States
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Most water and wastewater systems serve small, rural communities that often lack the scale, funding, and staffing to maintain their critical infrastructure. Public-private partnerships (PPPs or P3s) may be a solution. In this Perspective we diagnose the problems of rural water services and map the strengths of P3s to solve them. We discuss the challenges of adapting P3s to rural water infrastructure and suggest the most beneficial opportunities for doing so—namely, water utilities' new assets, revenue/capital, and regional collaboration. The work offers insights into how rural water and wastewater systems might pursue P3s to sustainably manage their infrastructure needs.
Keywords: Water infrastructure, asset management, utility, Project delivery, risk, Public-Private Partnerships, P3s
Received: 16 Sep 2025; Accepted: 16 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sowby, Farnsworth, South and George. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Robert B. Sowby, rsowby@byu.edu
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