By Brett Rosenberg
April 5, 2010

Environmental Protection Administrator (EPA) Lisa Jackson conveyed her new commitment to high quality, safe and healthy drinking water nationwide in a March 22 speech before the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies annual Water Policy Conference. Jackson framed her remarks around the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, which, over 35 years, has done a remarkable job of guiding communities toward healthy, contaminant-free water supplies, relative to the substances of concern at the time.

According to Jackson, the EPA, without introducing new regulations, will focus on four primary areas as it goes about optimizing how the nations cities and other areas provide clean water. First, the EPA will focus more on treating contaminants as groups rather than as individual constituents. Jackson said this strategy will streamline existing regulatory processes, especially considering that treatment technologies have not kept pace with the over 80,000 chemicals identified within the Toxic Substances Control Act. In her speech, Jackson said, “This is something Congress foresaw in the Safe Drinking Water Act – that the vast number of chemicals in use would grow, and that many would find their way into drinking water supplies. They saw that EPA couldnt regulate them all individually; and so, ambitious group-wide rules would be vital to manage threats to water safety.”

The second part of the EPA strategy involves engaging the private sector and others to catalyze innovative treatment technology development. According to Jackson and an EPA press release, this process will involve collaboration with universities, technology developers, and the private sector to develop water- and energy-efficient treatment technologies that can reliably reduce health risks and control the types of contaminants that confront utilities today and into the future. “This is an opportunity to foster incredible innovations that will save money for local ratepayers and local governments – and create jobs in the process,” Jackson said.

Part three of the strategy will widen the scope of multiple existing statutes to help protect drinking water. For instance, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act both address potential drinking water contaminants. By bringing these applicable laws into the fold, the EPA will be better able to fill gaps in data quality in order to improve decision-making processes. Using these authorities will also improve overall analytical abilities, preventing contaminants from entering water supplies in the first place.

The final part of the EPA strategy is an expansion of local and state partnerships. In particular, the EPA seeks to expand communication channels among municipalities, states and the agency to improve access to a wide variety of water quality data. According to the EPA, the rationale would be to strengthen the review of drinking water-related public health concerns without imposing the burden of additional information collection on individual water treatment system operators. Furthermore, the partnership would implement interactive communication tools to enable municipalities, states, the drinking water industry, and consumers to learn more about their drinking water and obtain timely information about the quality of drinking water and performance of drinking water systems.

Over the next few months, the EPA plans to hold several stakeholder meetings to flush out the details of its drinking water strategy. The United States Conference of Mayors will notify mayors of opportunities to participate in public meetings, webcasts and other appropriate forums.

Meanwhile, due to advances toxicology and detection technology, the EPA has recently finalized stricter standards for four carcinogenic chemicals: tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, acrylamide and epichlorohydrin. Tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene are impurities that can enter groundwater supplies following certain industrial and textile processing methods. Acrylamide and epichlorohydrin are by-products of some existing water treatment processes. Over the next year, the EPA will initiate its rulemaking process to revise standards for these substances within the framework of its new strategy.