Aren't There Federal Regulations? What Do They do About Safe Water?

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What Do They do About Safe Water?

In 1972, the Federal Clean Water Act targeted what is known as "point source pollution" -contamination coming from specific industries and industrial sites. The act helped start massive cleanups of rivers, lakes and streams brought to the point of biological death in many cases.

The action resulting from this legislation helped resolve point source pollution problems but non-point source pollution remains rampant nationwide. This type of pollution comes from rain drains, leaking septic tanks, leaking gasoline storage tanks and agricultural ground water pollution.

The federal government mandates to the states, with EPA participation, to set minimum acceptable contaminant levels in drinking water supplied through the local municipal systems within each state.

Municipal systems are regulated by state guidelines and monitored by local districts. They are allowed to deliver water with certain minimum levels of sediment, organic matter and non-pathenogenic (non-disease producing) bacteria.

Often, they violate these standards, especially during periods of heavy rain. However, they don't stop delivery (except in the most extreme cases) - they are only required to notify water users in the interim. Eventually they are required to fix the problem but sometimes, for example with asbestos, the problem is impossible to fix due to economics and/or logistics.

If people are actually getting sick, i.e. with diarrhea or worse, then more drastic measures are taken. For the most part, the action taken consists of notifying people that they need to boil their water or buy bottled water until otherwise notified.

In essence, the government can't solve the situation overnight. The problems are too massive and too complex. For example, out of over 300,000 toxic waste sites, the EPA has targeted one thousand of them as priority. Five years and $1.5 billion dollars later, few sites are cleaned up and the resulting damage to the groundwater supplies will remain for decades, even centuries.

Local governments, municipalities and water companies do their best but they are severely handicapped by a lack of funds, by the inability to test for a wide range of contaminants and by antiquated distribution systems, such as pipelines constructed of lead or asbestos. One example is compliance with the EPA priority list of 129 toxic chemicals found nationwide in the drinking water -- most municipalities test for less than thirty of these!