TRANSPARENCY POLICIES

7. Disclosing Contaminants to Improve Drinking Water Safety

Example: Drinking Water Contaminant Report

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974,69 the federal EPA set maximum safe contaminant levels for drinking water and required water systems to notify customers of violations.70 However, in practice such notification often did not take place.71 Public attention focused on the health risks associated with contaminated water in 1993 after the largest outbreak of waterborne disease on record in the United States. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin four hundred thousand people became sick, forty-four hundred were hospitalized, and more than fifty died from drinking water contaminated with a microbe called cryptosporidium.72

In response, Congress in 1996 amended the federal Safe Drinking Water Act to require that water suppliers, starting in October 1999, provide customers with annual reports on contamination. The annual reports included information on the source of tap water, contaminants found in the water, sources of contamination, and violations of EPA maximum contaminant levels. Their purpose was to allow consumers to make better choices concerning their use of tap water and to encourage water utilities to be more vigilant in minimizing contaminants.73

The Milwaukee incident was not the only driver of greater transparency. Americans were losing confidence in their public water supplies. Surveys in the late 1990s found that only three-quarters of Americans regularly drank tap water, and 65 percent increasingly used bottled water or filtered water at the tap.74 Experts suggested that drinking water contaminants were responsible for as many as one-third of nine hundred thousand “stomach flu” illnesses each year.75

Contamination levels variedwidelywith seasons, rainfall, and waste discharges. Sometimes chemicals and microbes enteredsystemsas waterflowedtohomesthroughcenturyold pipes.76 The EPA stated in 2004 that 27 of the 834 water systems serving more than fifty thousand people had exceeded federal safety standards for lead at least once since 2000.77 The water system serving the nation’s capital had failed to comply with sampling requirements and had failed to report to consumers that more than 10 percent of tap water samples since 2000 exceeded federal lead levels.78

Transparency requirements proved too weak to help residents assess risks or compare the safety of different water systems, however. They did not require consistent protocols, units of measurement, or formats for reporting contaminants. In 2003, an analysis of drinking water reports in nineteen cities by the National Resources Defense Council found that some cities buried or omitted information about health effects of contamination or warnings to consumers with compromised immune systems, all omitted information about specific polluters, fewer than half offered reports in languages other than English, and many made sweeping and inaccurate claims about water safety despite violations of federal contaminant levels.79

As of 2006, the drinking water contaminant disclosure system appeared to be unsustainable. Reports had improved little over the years in scope, quality, or use. Interestingly, new emphasis on homeland security raised the possibility of requiring more timely monitoring (and perhaps disclosure). In 2004, experts convened by the federal Government Accountability Office ranked “near real-time monitoring technologies” to detect contaminants as the highest priority in improving drinking water security.80 Two years earlier, the National Academy of Sciences rated improved monitoring technologies as one of four top security priorities for drinking water supplies.81

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FOOTNOTES
69. Safe DrinkingWater Act of 1974, Pub. L. 93–523, July 1, 1974, c. 373, Title XIV, as added December 16, 1974, §2(a), 88 Stat. 1669 (codified at 42 U.S.C. §§300f et seq.).
70. 42 U.S.C. §300g-2(c)(1)-(3). 71. General Accounting Office, 1992b.
72. See, for example, MacKenzie et al., 1994; Environmental Protection Agency, 1999.
73. 42 U.S.C. §300g-2(c)(4). Regulations are codified at 40 C.F.R. §141.151 et seq.
74. National Environmental Education and Training Foundation, 1999.
75. Payment et al., 1991.
76. Natural Resources Defense Council, 2003, Chapter 1, p. 2.
77. Even small amounts of lead can cause neurological problems in children and high blood pressure in adults. The EPA findings are summarized in Congressional Research Service, 2005, p. 2.
78. Congressional Research Service, 2005, p. 5.
79. Natural Resources Defense Council, 2003, Chapter 3.
80. Government Accountability Office, 2004, p. 13.
81. National Research Council, 2002.
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