[markrankin]

“The expectation of clean water in wealthy countries is enabled by technology and infrastructure; like effective sewage systems and water treatment facilities. But to a large extent it is also enabled, and was initially bootstrapped, by sound policymaking and regulation.

Regulation requires verification.”

Regulation of water does not require verification. We live on a planet where clean water is abundant and cannot escape the planet’s atmosphere. Why you think we need to measure how this is verified is beyond the beyond’s.

Here’s a wiki page reference if you need help measuring how much water exists on Earth:

While the majority of Earth's surface is covered by oceans, those oceans make up just a small fraction of the mass of the planet. The mass of Earth's oceans is estimated to be 1.37 × 1021 kg, which is 0.023% of the total mass of Earth, 6.0 × 1024 kg. An additional 5.0 × 1020 kg of water is estimated to exist in ice, lakes, rivers, groundwater, and atmospheric water vapor.[20]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth#Ear...

[twojacobtwo]

There are only so many ways and places to extract clean water for large populations in an efficient way. Once water is used, it has to go somewhere, which is back into the water system. Every person/population downstream then no longer has 'clean water' without verification. We could have 10x the clean water we have now and we would still have to consider this aspect.