Mr. Chairman, when our drinking water bill passed in 1996, I praised it because I believed the bill would enhance both the quality of our drinking water and America's confidence in its safety. Of course, the bill did not require that states perform every measure necessary to protect public health, but it provided tremendous flexibility and discretion to allow the states to do so.
I was especially hopeful that, in my state -- the most densely-populated state in the country, a state with an unfortunate legacy of industrial pollution, a state in which newspaper articles describing threats to drinking water seem to appear every few days -- that our state agencies would exercise their discretion to be more protective of public health than the minimum required under our 1996 bill.
Mr. Chairman, I am sad to say I have been disappointed. I am sad to say that in my state, and probably in some of yours as well, the state agency has clung too closely to the bare minimum requirements. A good example of this is in the "Source Water Assessment Plan," proposed by the state of New Jersey last November, as required by the 1996 law.
Under the law, the state is required to perform Source Water Assessments to identify geographic areas that are sources of public drinking water, assess the water systems' susceptibility to contamination, and inform the public of the results. Mr. Chairman, there are serious deficiencies in my state's proposed Source Water Assessment Plan. These are deficiencies that I fear may characterize other states' plans, as well.
Most importantly, under the proposed plan, the state will not identify and evaluate the threat presented by contaminants unless they are among the 80 or so specifically regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Radium 224, recently discovered in drinking water across my state, might not be evaluated under the state's plan until specifically regulated. With a gap like that in our information, what do I tell the families when they want to know what is in their drinking water?
The public must have access to comprehensive assessments for the Right to Know component of the drinking water program to be effective. And I will soon, formally, introduce legislation to make this happen. I hope we can consider improvements to this law in this Congress.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.