Gregory Pierce, director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab within the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was interviewed by People Places Planet Podcast about access to drinking water in Los Angeles County. Compared to energy and gas, utilities providing drinking water are much more fragmented because some systems are public while others are private. “A lot of the issues that are being faced particularly in East and Southeast Los Angeles are rounds of chemical and emerging contaminants, and a lot of them have been under the regulatory radar,” Pierce said. “A lot of the issues are classified legally as ‘secondary’ but really affect what’s coming out of people’s taps. And people don’t trust the water because it’s discolored, tastes bad, smells bad, and a lot of the issues there are actually coming from the plumbing inside buildings where landlords are technically responsible, not water systems.”