The Safe Drinking Water Act at 50: A Policy Model for Grand Challenges

America’s fragmented water sector is unsustainable, with tens of thousands of utilities operating nearly 50,000 community water systems. Most of these water utilities lack the technical, managerial, and financial capacity to operate efficiently and effectively. Sweeping consolidation is the clear solution. Congress recognized the need for consolidation when it passed the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in 1974; water sector leaders repeated the call for consolidation on the law’s 25th anniversary in 1999. Yet the drinking water industry remains highly fragmented 25 years later. Consolidation will not solve all of the nation’s drinking water problems, but without significant consolidation no other reform is likely to work in the long run. How much to consolidate is not as clear. How big is big enough? This chapter analyzes data on SDWA compliance, utility performance, and operational efficiency to identify a scale of consolidation that offers the best chance at sustainable excellence. A remarkably consistent picture emerges: the greatest potential improvements from consolidation are achieved when utilities serve around 20,000 or more customer connections. Taken together, these results suggest that consolidating the American drinking water sector to about 6,000 utilities with a minimum size of 20,000 connections would deliver better health, greater efficiency, more effective regulation, and lower prices.

A survey sampling approach is presented for estimating upper centiles of aggregate distributions of surface water pesticide measurements obtained from datasets with large sample sizes but variable sampling frequency. It is applied to three atrazine monitoring programs of Community Water Systems (CWS) that used surface water as their drinking water source: the nationwide Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) data, the Syngenta Voluntary Monitoring Program (VMP), and the Atrazine Monitoring Program (AMP).The VMP/AMP CWS were selected on the basis of atrazine monitoring history (CWS having at least one annual average concentration from SDWA ≥ 1.6 ppb atrazine since 1997 in the AMP). Estimates of the raw water 95th, 99th, and 99.9th centile atrazine concentrations for the VMP/AMP CWS are 4.82, 11.85, and 34.00 ppb, respectively. The corresponding estimates are lower for the finished drinking water samples, with estimates of 2.75, 7.94, and 22.66 ppb, respectively. Finished water centile estimates for the VMP/AMP CWS using only the SDWA data for these sites are consistent with the results. Estimates are provided for the April through July period and for CWS based on surface water source type (static, flowing, or mixed). Requisite sample sizes are determined using statistical tolerance limits, relative SE, and the Woodruff interval sample size criterion. These analyses provide 99.9% confidence that the existing data include the 99.9th centile atrazine concentration for CWS raw and finished water in the Midwest atrazine high-use areas and in the nationwide SDWA dataset. The general validity of this approach is established by a simulation that shows estimates to be close to target quantities for weights based on sampling probabilities or time intervals between samples. Recommendations are given for suitable effective sample sizes to reliably determine interval estimates.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to ensure that the water obtained from a public water supply is safe to drink. Under the SDWA, EPA establishes enforceable maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for contaminants that may have an adverse health effect and are known or anticipated to occur in water. Occasionally, public water supplies are unable to meet the MCL at the time it becomes enforceable. The SDWA allows public water supplies to apply to the State for a temporary variance or exemption from an MCL(s) as long as the concentration of the contaminant(s) exceeding the MCL(s) does not result in an unreasonable risk to human health. EPA has developed guidance to assist States in determining what level above the MCL presents an unreasonable health risk. In developing this guidance, the toxicity exhibited by each regulated contaminant is evaluated individually. Consideration is also given to the available risk assessments (short-term and long-term) for each contaminant, comparing carcinogenic risks with noncarcinogenic assessments. Other factors that may be considered on a contaminant by contaminant basis include for example, past exposure and expected duration of the variance or exemption period, population sensitivity, and volatilization of the contaminant from drinking water.

The Third World Water Forum takes place in Kyoto, Japan, this month. It will be the first major meeting of the sector since the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development, which endorsed the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people without access to improved water supply (estimated at 1.1 billion in 2000) and adopted the further goal of halving the 2.4 billion without sanitation. It is to be hoped that the Kyoto meeting will lay to rest three important and harmful misconceptions which have beset the water supply and sanitation sector in recent years. The first two of these are helpfully debunked in a book prepared for the Kyoto meeting (Satterthwaite & McGranahan 2003). Misconception number one is the perception that water supply is largely constrained by water resource limitations. A number of authors have dwelt on the imbalance between available supplies of fresh water and the population’s growing requirements. It has been estimated that by 2025 the share of the world’s population living in regions subject to water stress will reach 35% (Hinrichsen et al. 1998). Some have described the issue in more dramatic terms:

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed to reform federal environmental regulation around “risk management” principles that stressed pollution prevention, better priorities, and cost control. In spite of the fact that risk management were strongly supported by three successive presidential administrations, only one major federal statute – the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments of 1996 – was developed around these principles. The purpose of this paper is to understand why Congress succeeded in reforming the SDWA around risk management principles at a time when legislative reform of other federal pollution control policies remained stalled. Through a historical analysis of federal drinking water politics between 1970 and 1996, it is concluded that the somewhat unique politics surrounding the drinking water issue enabled risk management principles to serve as a “persuasive discourse” that bound together key interests within the policy community.

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) allows civil and, in some cases, criminal enforcement actions to be taken against water suppliers who fail to meet the requirements of drinking water regulations. The 1996 SDWA amendments expanded the scope of existing enforcement provisions, clarified enforcement in nonprimacy states, increased civil penalties, and added an incentive for consolidation.

ObjectivePast research yields inconsistent evidence of disparities in environmental quality by socioeconomic status (SES), race, and/or ethnicity. Since the political significance of race/ethnicity may be contingent upon SES, this study advances environmental justice research by examining interactively the effects of race, ethnicity, and SES on environmental quality.MethodsWe match 2010–2013 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance records with demographic and economic data for U.S. local government water utilities serving populations greater than 1,000. Statistical regression isolates direct and interactive relationships between communities’ racial/ethnic populations, SES, and SDWA compliance.ResultsWe find that community racial/ethnic composition predicts drinking water quality, but also that SES conditions the effect; specifically, black and Hispanic populations most strongly predict SDWA violations in low‐SES communities.ConclusionsOur findings highlight the importance of analyzing race, ethnicity, and SES interactively in environmental justice research. Results also carry troubling implications for drinking water quality in the United States.

Over the past few decades, commercial water—bottled water or water sold from water kiosks (e.g., water vending machines)—has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. Many commercial water products claim to be superior to tap water, despite being less stringently regulated. This chapter examines disparities in regulation between tap and commercial drinking water. Tap water is strictly regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), while bottled water is less stringently regulated by the Food and Drug Administration under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Kiosk water is essentially unregulated at the national level, and state-based regulations of water kiosks vary widely from state to state. The lack of regulations surrounding commercial water is ironic, given commercial water companies’ claims of selling a superior product to tap water. This chapter reviews the challenges posed by and lessons to be learned from commercial water and then outlines a series of recommendations to guide the next 50 years of policy regarding safe drinking water systems, which today include commercial water.

In July 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposed rule under the authority of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regarding the geologic sequestration (GS) of carbon dioxide. The proposed rule recommends the addition of a new class of injection well, Class VI, to EPA’s existing Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program to address the unique nature of carbon dioxide injection and to ensure the protection of underground sources of drinking water (USDWs) from carbon dioxide injection-related activities. The proposed GS Rule builds upon the existing UIC regulatory framework established under the SDWA. The final rule, anticipated in late 2010 or early 2011, will apply to owners and operators of permitted Class VI injection wells for the subsurface injection of carbon dioxide for long-term underground storage. States interested in obtaining approval for primary enforcement responsibility ("primacy") for the new Class VI program will apply for primacy to EPA with either a new UIC program application or a UIC program revision (depending on a particular state’s existing UIC primacy status). Any state that chooses not to apply for primacy, or that has not yet received approval for their proposed Class VI program, will have the UIC Class VI program administered by EPA until such time as the state has an approved Class VI program. EPA is developing multiple technical and programmatic guidance documents for UIC Directors and proposed Class VI injection well owners and operators to assist in meeting the new GS rule requirements. In addition, EPA will be conducting nationwide training workshops for UIC Directors on primacy application and on the technical and programmatic elements of GS Rule and its implementation. EPA is also planning for a series of webcasts focused on technical aspects of the GS rule for interested owners, operators, field service providers, UIC permit reviewers, and others to be involved in GS activities. EPA anticipates that these guidance documents, implementation tools, trainings, and other outreach efforts will assist Class VI injection well owners and operators, as well as state UIC Directors, in meeting the new GS Rule requirements.

This roundtable discussion focuses on the enforcement of Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulations. Reflecting its dissatisfaction with the US Environmental Protection Agency's track record of enforcing the SDWA, Congress gave the agency new enforcement powers and the mandate to use them when it passed the 1986 SDWA amendments. The change in enforcement status quo has raised numerous questions among those responsible for achieving and ensuring compliance, especially in light of the promise of a dramatically increased number of regulations.

An extensive system of regulations, standards, and guidance has been put in place over the last 35 years to protect human health and the environment from exposure to chemical and microbial contaminants, hazardous materials, and pollutants from human activity. These include provisions in the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the Clean Water Act, and other environmental laws. There are also a number of laws that relate to protection and access to sensitive information. More recently, a number of Presidential Directives relative to homeland security have been issued, and the SDWA has been amended by the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002. This article briefly describes these laws and highlights those aspects that offer potential benefits to avoiding or mitigating the consequences of intentional acts of terror.

The specific role of the National Drinking Water Advisory Council as related to the proposed organics regulations is discussed in addition to the basic operating structure of the council. The establishment of maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for trihalomethanes, and a treatment technique for the removal of synthetic organic compounds from water supplies are covered. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and EPA's role in implementing new regulations are examined.

The current study examines whether social and economic factors affect the geographic distribution of safe drinking water act (SDWA) violations at the county-level, 2016–2018. Our research controls for a variety of factors in an effort to assess whether community ethnicity, poverty, and racial characteristics appear to be related to the geographic distribution of SDWA violations. The results indicated that populations that are exposed to unsafe drinking water are clustered in certain areas. There appears to be a “contaminated drinking water belt” in the Southwest and South regions, which are concentrated in California’s Central Valley, the Texas colonias, and the rural South. Consistent with the spatial cluster results, the zero-inflated count regression model showed that the percentage of Hispanics was a significant predictor of SDWA violations. In addition, the results indicated that counties with SDWA violations and persistent poverty co-occur, suggesting that concentrated poverty matters, and has a negative impact on local drinking water quality.

Since the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) enacted the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in 1974, an increasingly complex series of rulemakings has transformed the US drinking water regulatory program into a labyrinth of requirements supported by a vast administrative superstructure. Furthermore, with each amendment of the SDWA, the paradigm applied to the regulation of drinking water contaminants has shifted. The financial and personnel demands imposed by implementation and compliance with existing and upcoming rules have strained the limited resources of water utilities, state agencies, and USEPA itself. In addition to summarizing the current regulatory program, this article delineates the patchwork quilt of requirements specified in the Stage 2 Disfectants/Disinfection Byproducts Rule and other upcoming regulations.

Identifying violations is at the heart of environmental compliance, especially detecting contaminants that endanger human health and safety. A review of state drinking water compliance programs demonstrates that the rate and frequency of identifying health‐based violations varies significantly across the states. Previous scholarship has attributed much of this variation to anthropogenic causes. Less studied is the role of natural disasters and other natural events, which may also influence compliance outcomes. To address this gap, we build and utilize a novel data set of state‐reported health‐based violations reported under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) from 1993 to 2016. We are particularly interested in the role that events, such as severe storms, hurricanes, floods, and fires, have on the patterns of health‐based violations. Results indicate that not all focusing events are created equally and that severe storms and hurricanes are associated with state agencies identifying a flurry of violations as compared to fires and flooding.