Drinking water treatment improvements begun at the turn of the 20th Century have advanced public health protection enormously, but much of the nation's drinking water infrastructure now is aging and outdated. We must modernize our water systems and safeguard the nation's water supplies from new and emerging contaminants. The 1996 SDWA Amendments should help to encourage better health protection, and EPA should be commended for its generally open public process used to date in implementing most of this law. There are several areas of concern, however, in the implementation of the new Act:
Health Effects Research funding must be assured and increased, particularlyin light of a court decision effectively eliminating the SRF set-aside for such research. EPA must immediately fund certain high-priority joint research with CDC and ATSDR on disinfection byproducts' reproductive effects, though existing data on these effects are sufficient to warrant expeditious public health prevention measures. EPA also needs additional resources to address emerging contaminants on the contaminant candidate list. EPA should be open in developing these research plans, as in the case of the Microbial and Disinfection Byproducts Council rather than using a largely closed-door approach as in the case of arsenic. The required vulnerable subpopulations research has lagged; EPA must open up the process for planning this work and make it a high priority.
Public Right-to-Know about tap water contamination will help to build public understanding of tap water challenges, and of the need for investment in drinking water protection and infrastructure improvement. The EPA right-to-know report rules issued in 1998 are a major step forward, commendably developed with much public participation The public's understanding should be enhanced with improvements in the reports recommended in this testimony. Additionally, a major campaign to educate to the public to expect and understand the reports.
Source Water Assessment and Protection provisions in the law pose major opportunities to improve drinking water protection in a cost-effective and environmentally beneficial manner. To date, the program has had some success with many states submitting SWAP plans to EPA in February 1999. However, progress in the future is not clear because many states have made no commitment to having an open public process for implementing the source water assessments, and most states have said they plan to do no significant new source water monitoring meaning little new information will be gathered to inform decision makers or the public on pollution sources. Additionally, there is a clear need for regulatory teeth to address major source water polluters.
State Revolving Fund (SRF) funding will be inadequate to address the more than $138 billion in needs for drinking water source protection, treatment upgrades, and distribution system improvements. This shortfall makes meaningful public participation in the state priority-setting for spending SRF money extremely important, but most states have done little to truly involve the public. Thus, we recommend that states be required to set aside a percentage of their SRF allotment to fund real public participation. In addition, we are concerned that some states are likely to fund growth through the SRF rather than funding the backlog of infrastructure improvement needs.
New Standards for Microbes, Disinfection Byproducts, Arsenic, Groundwater, Filter Backwash, and Radon must be issued over the next few years, yet EPA resources for these efforts are inadequate. These rules will be determinative as to whether the "Third Revolution" in drinking water protection involving true multiple barriers to contamination in the form of source water protection, advanced "leap frog" treatment technologies, and modern distribution system management will occur in the early 21st Century, or whether the nation's aging and often outdated water supplies will continue to inadequately address these emerging problems and to deteriorate.
Drinking Water Compliance and Small Systems Problems Continue to Plague the Program, as documented in the attached USA Today series and in EPA's own 1998 Annual Compliance Report, which showed widespread violations of the Act and inadequate state and EPA enforcement against even the most recalcitrant violators. The program also needs to improve its data collection and management program, including routine audits of federally-funded state programs. The new SDWA small system viability provisions could begin to reduce these problems, but substantial additional resources are needed to assure that these programs bear fruit. Additionally, small system technical assistance should be granted on a competitive basis to the applicant who demonstrates that they can deliver accurate technical assistance to small systems in a cost-efficient manner.
Good morning, I am Erik D. Olson, a Senior Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a national non-profit public interest organization dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. We have over 400,000 members nationwide. I also serve as a national coordinator of the Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water, an alliance of over 300 public health, medical, consumer, environmental, HIV/AIDS, and other groups committed to improving the quality of the nation's drinking water. I speak today, however, only on behalf of NRDC.
Background on Drinking Water Protection in the United States
As a nation, the United States has made significant progress in protecting our drinking water over the past century. In the mid- and late 19th Centuries, widespread deaths and serious illness swept across the nation due to cholera and typhoid, in large measure spawning the public health movement. Indeed, in the late 1800's here in Washington, D.C., hundreds of deaths per year were attributed to these waterborne diseases. Between the last turn of the century and World War I, many of the nation's larger water supplies installed water treatment using coagulation and sedimentation, filtration, and chlorine disinfection. There is no doubt that these treatments yielded enormous public health benefits, and over time the scourge of cholera and typhoid was largely eliminated from the United States.New Public Health Challenges
However, we now face many new, and other long-standing (but in some cases newly-recognized) drinking water quality problems. The vast majority of the nation's big water utilities continue to rely upon the same World War I-era technologies that served us well for the past many decades, but that are not up to meeting many current water quality challenges. For example, these technologies (coagulation & sedimentation, filtration, and chlorination) as currently configured in many water systems apparently are inadequate to fully remove Cryptosporidium, the chlorine-resistant protozoan that sickened over 400,000 people in Milwaukee and killed about 100 in 1993, and has caused at least 35 other waterborne disease outbreaks in the U.S., United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
Indeed, according to informal 1987 estimates by scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 940,000 Americans got sick and 900 died a year from waterborne microbial illness caused by contaminated tap water. More recent 1999 informal CDC estimates are that from 200,000 to 1,300,000 Americans are sickened by microbes in drinking water per year, with 50 to 1,200 losing their lives as a result. Other published estimates of U.S. waterborne disease range from 400,000 waterborne illnesses per year to 27 million per year, with a central estimate of over 7 million per year published by waterborne disease experts from Tufts University Medical School and EPA (though this is not an official EPA figure). The SDWA now requires EPA and CDC with developing new estimates of the total number of waterborne diseases in the U.S. by August 2001.
Moreover, many of the byproducts of our modern chemical age, such as many synthetic organic industrial chemicals and pesticides, generally are not removed by current treatment technologies, often slipping right through the treatment plant and reaching our taps. Additionally, most public water supplies have little or no formal system in place to protect their source water from contamination, so they must rely upon existing and sometimes inadequate government pollution controls. Finally, the underground pipes that take our drinking water from the treatment plant to our homes the so-called distribution system is in many cities and small towns across America crumbling. Many of these old pipes are filling with sediment, and are sometimes harboring, or allowing infiltration (through "cross-connections" with sewer lines or other contaminated water), of bacteria which may carry disease. These pipes also often contain significant amounts of lead, which can leach into the water and harm children and infants.
The good news is that we now know far more about these contaminants and how to remove them from our drinking water than ever before. We are on the cusp of a "Third Revolution" in drinking water delivery: the First Revolution began many centuries ago with the provision of piped water using aqueducts and bringing water to homes. At the turn of the 20th Century, the Second Revolution brought us coagulation & sedimentation, filtration, and chlorination, and their enormous benefits. The Third Revolution, now just beginning, will involve "multiple barriers" to tap water contamination, including meaningful protection of source waters, installation of modern water treatment technologies (such as membranes, granular activated carbon, potentially ultraviolet radiation and other more advanced disinfectants and other treatments), and improved distribution systems. EPA has estimated, based on state figures, that the beginnings of this revolution will cost over $138 billion dollars. This figure is widely viewed as a substantial underestimate.
The Role of the Safe Drinking Water Act
Many of the recent improvements in drinking water have been spurred by the Safe Drinking Water Act. First signed into law by President Ford in 1974, this Act took the significant step of effectively making enforceable about two dozen previously voluntary U.S. Public Health Service drinking water standards, most of which dated back to 1962 or even to 1942. In 1986, unhappy with the pace of EPA standard setting, Congress amended the Act to require the agency to issue or revise standards for 83 named contaminants by 1989, and then to add standards for 25 new contaminants every 3 years thereafter a provision that never was implemented.
The 1996 SDWA Amendments
The most recent amendments, the SDWA Amendments of 1996, took a somewhat new tack, emphasizing the need for greater focus and research on the highest risk contaminants including those most risky to children and other vulnerable people. The new law also focused on the public's right to know about their tap water, the need for public involvement in decisions about their drinking water, the necessity of federal financial assistance to water systems, and the desire for greater state flexibility. The new law also required new steps to assess source water contamination, and to address small system problems.
Additionally, the 1996 Amendments modified the standard setting provisions to require certain cost and benefit assessments, and to allow consideration of certain costs and benefits in specified contexts provisions which have not yet been used (The December 1998 Microbial and Disinfection Byproduct rules, and the February 1999 radon risk assessments and cost-benefit analyses, were completed under other contaminant-specific risk/benefit provisions of the new SDWA, rather than the new general SDWA cost-benefit analysis provisions). Congressional efforts to heap even more economic and cost-benefit analytical requirements on top of these requirements through some form of omnibus regulatory reform legislation or similar law would disrupt the delicately-crafted and negotiated provisions in the SDWA, wreak an administrative nightmare and gridlock, and undercut the public health goals of the SDWA.
Implementation of the 1996 SDWA Amendments
We agree with the January 1999 General Accounting Office study's conclusion that it is too early to judge whether the new law has been a success. However, implementation to date has lead to some important successes as well as well as some difficulties.
State Revolving Fund (SRF). Clearly, the SDWA 1996 Amendments have led to the pumping of major new and urgently-needed resources to states and public water systems. For example, several billion dollars in capitalization grants for State Revolving Funds have been appropriated or authorized. These SRF resources are expected to yield significant improvements.
It is clear, however, as the GAO has noted, that the current funding for the SRF will be far from adequate to address the needs for drinking water infrastructure upgrades. While it is manifest that the federal government will not be able to fund all these needed improvements, there is an urgent need to help water systems and states to pay for the more than $138 billion in needed improvements in source water protection, water treatment, and upgrades of aging distribution systems.
In some states the public has been invited to assist the state in setting funding priorities including whether major investments will be made in prevention-oriented source water assessment and protection. However, we have been troubled by the lack of meaningful public involvement in other states in decision-making over how those funds will be used and how many other state decisions are made. We believe that states should be required to set aside a portion of their federal SRF and Public Water System Supervision grants (which have increased from about $50 million/year to over $90 million/year over the past five years) for real public involvement activities. We also are concerned that some states may use their SRF funds to pay for water system growth, despite the clear ban in the Act on such use of the funds.
Health Effects Research. On the research front, Congress has increased EPA's drinking water research budget, a move that we and the public interest community, the water industry, and states strongly support. Still, however, as noted by GAO's recent report, there is a need for an additional $10 to $20 million per year in EPA resources for drinking water research, particularly in the health effects research area.
As EPA undertakes its ongoing efforts to conduct research on contaminants such as disinfection byproducts, microbes, arsenic, and others, the agency has had few resources to put into research into emerging contaminants. For example, EPA has virtually no resources available to conduct research on the health effects of contaminants on the Contaminant Candidate List, such as important unregulated microbes (some of which were discussed in Monday's front page Washington Post article on the emerging evidence on the possible role of microbial organisms in causing chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis, ulcers and kidney stones). Neither has EPA sufficient resources to update its more than 80 currently regulated drinking water contaminants.
In some cases, EPA's decision making on research priorities has been open and has effectively involved the public as in the case of the Microbial and Disinfection Byproduct (M/DBP) research, where the agency and the American Water Works Association Research Foundation formed a research council with members of the water industry, public interest community, EPA, states, and others for a truly inclusive process.
Our single critique of the agency's efforts on M/DBP issues has been the lack of emphasis, until relatively recently, on conducting sufficient research on the potential birth defects and spontaneous abortions that may be caused by disinfection byproducts. It is important for EPA, CDC, and ATSDR fund "piggy back" and other similar expedited epidemiological research on these effects to maximize the data available for making decisions during upcoming "Stage 2" disinfection byproduct rules, due in 2002. We and many others believe strongly that enough is known now about the adverse effects of DBPs on health to warrant expeditious public health prevention action to put into place modern source protection actions and treatment technologies that will reduce exposure to these chemicals while also improving microbial protection. But additional research clearly would be helpful to narrow the uncertainties.
In other cases, EPA has been far less open and inclusive in its research planning. In the case of arsenic, the agency formed a joint committee with the water industry to map out its research priorities, effectively impeding meaningful public involvement and creating ill will. Subsequent public notice and comment on the agency's arsenic research plan following substantial complaints from the public about this closed-door process failed to redress the perception of undue industry influence on EPA's arsenic research planning.
Similarly, the Agency's research on the effects of drinking water contamination on vulnerable subpopulations required to be provided to Congress by August 2000 under the SDWA 1458(a) has not included any meaningful public planning or discussion; it is unclear from the outside whether any significant new research in this area is planned or underway. Overall, however, we believe that EPA has improved its research planning and quality in the drinking water arena, though it should be more open and less exclusive in establishing its future overall drinking water research agenda, perhaps using a successful model like the M/DBP Research Council.
Upcoming Microbial/Disinfection Byproducts, Arsenic, Groundwater, Filter Backwash, and Radon Rules. There are many challenges facing EPA in the drinking water standard setting arena. The agency must tackle some of the thorniest, most long-standing drinking water problems in the next few years. Arsenic, a known human carcinogen that is found in the tap water of over 50 million Americans at significant levels, is still governed by a woefully antiquated tap water standard set in 1942 based on bad science and not amended since. EPA must update that standard by 2001 under the SDWA.
Similarly, EPA must deal more comprehensively with Cryptosporidium, which is found in raw or finished water by water suppliers serving over 45 million Americans, and must also begin to consider seriously how to control other emerging microbial disease-carrying organisms. Disinfection byproducts (DBPs), linked in numerous human epidemiological studies and animal tests to cancer and more recently to reproductive harms such as birth defects and spontaneous abortions, are found at substantial levels in over 100 million Americans' tap water.
These microbial and disinfection byproduct contaminants will be addressed in rules expected to be issued in 2002. These new rules will likely necessitate significant upgrades in the nation's drinking water source protection and treatment and distribution system infrastructure. EPA's interim approach in issuing the December 1998 Stage 1 DBP and Interim Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule was essentially to require water systems to "do as well as you can with what equipment you've got." The new rules will have to go beyond simply tuning up our existing, often out-of-date treatment.
Additionally, the filter backwash rule will be critical to ensuring that water filtration plants are not simply using their filters to concentrate the microorganisms they are filtering out, and then reintroducing those microbes into the water.
Groundwater contamination with microbes also remains a problem. EPA is developing a groundwater rule, but this will have to be fully integrated with other EPA rules and state activities.
Radon, is another known human carcinogen in tap water EPA must soon regulate. The National Academy of Sciences has just verified that radon from tap water likely causes about 180 fatal cancers per year (and many more cancers are caused by indoor radon seepage into buildings from soil).
As these rules are issued, attention must be paid to how these contaminant-specific rules, and the pollution prevention provisions of the SDWA and Clean Water Act will be better integrated into an effective program to protect public health and the environment. We believe that ultimately it may be fruitful for the nation to consider an approach to drinking water protection that encourages broad source water protection combined with new "leap frog" treatment technologies and distribution system management techniques that can prevent or remove contamination by a broad spectrum of chemicals and microorganisms. This could lead to greater public health protection, while relieving cities, towns, and water utilities from the treadmill of ever-changing contaminant-by-contaminant regulation and monitoring, which is fraught with uncertainty that makes long-term planning difficult, and which is often reactive to new contaminant research, monitoring, scientific discoveries, and public concerns.
Consumer Right-to-Know About Tap Water Contamination. To redress these and other tap water problems, public involvement will be crucial. The 1996 SDWA required water suppliers to issue annual right-to-know reports (or "Consumer Confidence Reports"), which will tell the public about which contaminants are in their drinking water.
This will be the real test of whether EPA, States, and the nation's water systems are able to work in partnership with us and others to educate and involve the public in the fight for better drinking water protection. If effectively implemented and combined with a meaningful public education campaign, the right to know rules will help to empower the public to address the challenges ahead as major infrastructure investments are needed. However, to achieve this goal, EPA must dedicate substantial additional resources to work to educate specific groups such as health care providers, the immunocompromised, pregnant women, the frail elderly, children's' organizations, other vulnerable populations, and the general public, to help them anticipate and understand these reports.
EPA's rules for these reports, issued in August 1998, will begin to make this goal a reality. However, aggressive state and water utility steps to go beyond the minimum requirements of the rules will be necessary to assure that the public is fully informed.
We were especially pleased with EPA's excellent public outreach and participation in developing these rules. Still, there is room for improvement in the rules. For example, we believe that water systems should be required to mail their reports to all consumers who drink the water (including all postal patrons in served areas not just those who pay water bills), and should have to reveal levels of all contaminants they find in their tap water at levels of potential health concern even if they are not required to monitor for them under the SDWA. Additionally, the health effects of all contaminants found should be required to be noted in the reports, as should the names of the specific sources of the pollution found in drinking water, and actions consumers can take to protect themselves. A clearer requirement for translation of the reports for substantial non-English-speaking populations also would be helpful, as would a requirement that consumers be more expeditiously notified of newly-found contaminants of potential health concern, or contaminants with substantially increased levels compared to previous public reports.
Drinking Water Compliance Problems Including Ongoing Problems With Small Systems--and the Need to Improve Databases. There continue to be problems with the current drinking water compliance program, as is discussed in detail in the attached USA Today series published in October 1998. We are hopeful that the new SDWA small system viability provisions will help to reduce some of these problems, but additional state and federal resources will be needed to make a major dent in the small system compliance problem. We strongly believe that all EPA-funded (whether state or EPA-administered) small system technical assistance should be granted only after competitive bidding, as suggested in a 1998 EPA Inspector General's report.
Improved state data collection and reporting on compliance and enforcement to EPA is needed, with EPA audits of state records and reports. Moreover, compliance remains a problem for many EPA health standards, and state and EPA enforcement of the SDWA remains unacceptably weak. The vast majority of health standard and major monitoring violations and even the majority of EPA-defined "significant non-compliers" are not subjected to formal enforcement action, even after extended or serious health-threatening violations. Small system noncompliance remains a substantial problem, and many large systems also violate EPA health standards, according to state and EPA records.
Source Water Assessment and Protection. Finally, strong state and EPA efforts are needed to make the source water assessment and protection efforts work. The public must be meaningfully involved in all states, and funding decisions at the state level must emphasize the need for these prevention-oriented activities (not just building new treatment plants), and for public involvement in making these decisions. In addition, we have found that in most states, there is no plan for new monitoring of contamination when source water assessments are being completed in essence, most states plan to use existing monitoring data. We are deeply troubled by this approach, because it is clear that in many cases, additional monitoring will be needed to identify current and potential sources of pollution for our drinking water supplies. Clean Water Act and SDWA programs also must be better integrated, and more teeth are needed to prevent polluted runoff, animal feeding operations, and other major unregulated or under-regulated pollution sources.
Conclusions
In sum, while there remain some significant implementation issues, it is too early to render a verdict on the 1996 SDWA Amendments. We believe that there are hopeful signs that the public's right to know will be ensured, that public health protection particularly for the most vulnerable among us such as children will be improved, and that some progress will be made towards addressing source water contamination problems. The true tests of EPA, states, and water systems will come over the next few years. What happens in these years could determine whether the Third Revolution in safe drinking water delivery occurs smoothly and deliberately, or is hampered by delays, fits and starts. We remain cautiously optimistic that the future will bring safer tap water for all Americans in the 21st Century.