Explainer: Who regulates U.S. drinking water, and how?

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Federal, state and local governments all have a hand in protecting public water systems and private wells from contamination.

Drinking Water
Photo by LuAnn Hunt on Unsplash

By Brett Walton, writer, ensia (CC BY-ND 3.0)

Troubled Waters: This piece is part of Troubled Waters, a collection of stories around safe drinking water.

Originally published on September 29, 2020 — Editor’s note: This story is part of a nine-month investigation of drinking water contamination across the U.S. The series is supported by funding from the Park Foundation and Water Foundation. Read the launch story, “Thirsting for Solutions,” here.

Who’s responsible for making sure the water you drink is safe? Ultimately, you are. But if you live in the U.S., a variety of federal, state and local entities are involved as well.

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) forms the foundation of federal oversight of public water systems — those that provide water to multiple homes or customers. Congress passed the landmark law in 1974 during a decade marked by accumulating evidence of cancer and other health damage caused by industrial chemicals that found their way into drinking water. The act authorized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the first time to set national standards for contaminants in drinking water. The EPA has since developed standards for 91 contaminants, a medley of undesirable intruders that range from arsenic and nitrate to lead, copper and volatile organic chemicals like benzene.

In 1996, amendments to the SDWA revised the process for developing drinking water standards, which limit the levels of specific contaminants. Nearly a quarter century after those amendments, an increasing number of policymakers and public health advocates today argue that the act is failing its mission to protect public health and is once again in need of major revision.

EPA Regulated Drinking Water Contaminants
EPA Regulated Drinking Water Contaminants

Setting Limits

The process for setting federal drinking water contaminant limits, which is overseen by the EPA, was not designed to be speedy.

First, the EPA identifies a list of several dozen unregulated chemical and microbial contaminants that might be harmful. Then water utilities, which are in charge of water quality monitoring, test their treated water to see what shows up. The identification and testing is done on a five-year cycle. The EPA examines those results and, for at least five contaminants, as required by the SDWA, it determines whether a regulation is needed.

Three factors go into the decision: Is the contaminant harmful? Is it widespread at high levels? Will a regulation meaningfully reduce health risks? If the answer is “Yes” to all three, then a national standard will be forthcoming. Altogether, the process can take a decade or more from start to finish.

Usually, however, one of the three answers is “No.” Since the 1996 amendments were passed, the EPA has not regulated any new contaminants through this process, though it has strengthened existing rules for arsenic, microbes and the chemical byproducts of drinking water disinfection. The agency did decide in 2011 that it should regulate perchlorate — which is used in explosives and rocket fuel and damages the thyroid — but reversed that decision in June 2020, claiming that the chemical is not widespread enough to warrant a national regulation.

Two other chemicals have recently advanced to the standard-writing stage. In February, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler announced that the agency would regulate PFOA and PFOS, both members of the class of non-stick, flame-retarding chemicals known as PFAS. For those two chemicals, the EPA currently has issued a health advisory, which is a non-enforceable guideline.

The act of writing a national standard introduces more calculations: health risks, cost of treatment to remove the contaminant from water and availability of treatment technology. Considering these, the EPA establishes what is known as a maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG), which is the level at which no one is expected to become ill from the contaminant over a lifetime. The agency then sets a standard as close to the goal as possible, taking treatment cost into account.

Standards, in the end, are not purely based on health protection and sometimes are higher than the MCLG. These standards, except for lead, apply to water as it leaves the treatment plant or moves throughout the distribution system. They do not apply to water from a home faucet, which could be compromised by old plumbing.

The EPA also has 15 “secondary” standards that relate to how water tastes and smells. Unless mandated by a state, utilities are not required to meet these standards.

Once the EPA sets a drinking water standard, the nation’s roughly 50,000 community water systems — plus tens of thousands of schools, office buildings, gas stations and campgrounds that operate their own water systems — are obligated to test for the contaminant. If a regulated substance is found, system operators must treat the water so that contaminant concentrations fall below the standard.

Omissions and Nuances

That is the regulatory process at the federal level. But there are omissions and nuances.

One big omission is private wells. Water in wells that supply individual homes is not regulated by federal statute. Rather, private well owners are responsible for testing and treating their own well water. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that about 15% of U.S. residents use a private well. Some states, such as New Jersey, require that private wells be tested for contaminants before a home is sold. County health departments might also have similar point-of-sale requirements.

Primary Water Source for U.S. Households
Primary Water Source for U.S. Households. Source: 2017 U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey.

The nuance comes at the state level. States generally carry out the day-to-day grunt work of gathering water quality data from utilities and enforcing action against violations. To gain this authority, they must set drinking water standards that are at least as protective as the federal ones. If they want, they can set stricter limits or regulate contaminants that the EPA has not touched.

State authority had long been uncontroversial because only a few states — California and some northeastern states — were setting their own standards. That has changed in the last few years as states, responding to public pressure in the absence of an EPA standard, began regulating PFAS compounds.

“There was always a little bit of state standards-setting,” says Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, an umbrella group for state regulators. “But it’s gone from a little bit to a lot.”

Six states — Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Vermont — adopted drinking water standards for certain PFAS compounds, while four others, including North Carolina and Minnesota, have issued health advisories or guidelines for groundwater cleanup.

States are also putting limits on other chemicals that the EPA has ignored. In July, New York adopted the nation’s first drinking water standard for 1,4-dioxane, a synthetic chemical that was used before the 1990s as an additive to industrial solvents. The EPA deems it likely to cause cancer, but the agency has not regulated it in drinking water. In 2017, California approved a limit for 1,2,3-TCP, another manufactured industrial solvent that the EPA considers likely to be carcinogenic.

The burst of state standards, especially for PFAS chemicals, has raised eyebrows. Some lawmakers worry that mismatched standards are confusing to residents. New York and New Jersey, for instance, set different limits on PFOA and PFOS in drinking water.

“This can create poor risk communication and a crisis of confidence by the public who have diminished trust in their state’s standard when it fails to align with a neighboring state,” Rep. Paul Tonko of New York said during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing in July.

Other representatives countered with the view that the EPA should concentrate on a select number of the most concerning contaminants so as not to overwhelm utilities and states with too many rules that are too hastily put together. Rep. John Shimkus from Illinois, echoing statements made by other committee members, said he does not want a system in which “quantity makes quality.”

Tonko, however, argued that the federal process “has not worked,” pointing to the two-plus decades since a new contaminant was regulated.

This debate, and other considerations like regional drinking water standards, is likely to carry over into the next Congress.

Federal, state and local governments all have a hand in protecting public water systems and private wells from contamination.

‘Trying to Have It Both Ways’: Investigation Reveals BP and Shell Still Back Anti-Climate Lobby Groups, Despite Pledges

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The Unearthed and HuffPost report reveals the companies failed to disclose membership in at least eight Big Oil lobbies in their transparency reports. 

Oil Refinery
Image by Thomas H. from Pixabay

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer, Common Dreams (CC BY-ND 3.0).

Fossil fuel giants Royal Dutch Shell and BP remain active members of numerous Big Oil lobby groups fighting against climate legislation and regulation—without disclosing this in their transparency reports—an Unearthed and HuffPost investigation revealed Monday. 

According to the report, Shell and BP—the world’s second- and fourth-largest oil companies by revenue last year—are members of at least eight industry trade organizations lobbying against climate measures in the United States and Australia.

Both companies support the “astroturf” group Alliance of Western Energy Consumers, which boasted that it had “defeated carbon pricing bills” in Oregon, and the Texas Oil & Gas Association, which is fighting regulation of the super-heating greenhouse gas methane in the nation’s largest oil-producing state. 

Shell and BP also both back the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, both of which are working to undercut the country’s compliance with the Paris climate agreement. Shell also remains a member of the Queensland Resources Council, which is backing construction of the world’s largest coal mine in the northeastern state. 

[Shell and BP are] trying to have it both ways, being socially responsible without changing their actual positions.”

—Robert Brulle, climate denial researcher and professor at Brown University’s Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.

The companies, which are quoted in the report, say they are trying to reform the lobby groups from the inside, and that they would review their membership in the future.

“If we reach an impasse, we will be transparent in publicly stating our differences,” BP said. “And on major issues, if our views and those of an association cannot be reconciled then we will be prepared to leave.” 

Earlier this year, both Shell and BP announced in almost identical language their “ambition” to be net-zero emissions businesses by 2050. In recent years they have also very publicly quit numerous industry trade groups that fund denial of anthropogenic climate change or that fight legislation or regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, while pledging to be more transparent about their associations with lobby groups.

While some observers have praised Shell and BP for finally taking some meaningful action to combat climate change caused by carbon emissions—which Shell’s own scientists warned about nearly 40 years ago—many climate activists say the companies’ efforts are misleading, and aren’t nearly enough to avert the worst effects of catastrophic global heating.

Last week, a report from Oil Change International stated that none of the plans or pledges from eight leading oil companies including Shell and BP even come close to aligning with the 2015 Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Kelly Trout, a senior research analyst at OCI, likened oil companies to “an arsonist pledging to light a few less fires.” 

Robert Brulle, a climate denial researcher and professor at Brown University’s Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, accused Shell and BP of “trying to have it both ways.” 

“This is a standard business practice,” Brulle told HuffPost and Unearthed—which is Greenpeace U.K.’s investigative journalism platform. “They’re trying to have it both ways, being socially responsible without changing their actual positions.”  

Jane Goodall: The window of time to find climate change solutions is closing

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Photo by Hu Chen on Unsplash
Photo by Hu Chen on Unsplash

By Kate Whiting, Senior Writer, Formative Content, World Economic Forum (CC BY-ND 4.0).

  • Primatologist Jane Goodall has urged the world to work together to solve the greatest threat we’re facing: climate change.
  • She was speaking at a session on the World Economic Forum’s digital platform UpLink, which is dedicated to finding solutions to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.
  • The work of the Jane Goodall Institute with the people of Gombe National Park shows we can find solutions that protect livelihoods and the planet.
  • Before we can tackle climate change, there are three major challenges we have to overcome: poverty, excess and population growth.

In 1990, Jane Goodall flew over Gombe National Park, home to the chimpanzees she had been studying for 30 years.

“The national park, which had been part of the great equatorial forest belt that stretched across Africa, was a tiny island of forest surrounded by completely bare hills – more people living there than the land could support, too poor to buy food from elsewhere, overfarmed land.

“That’s when it hit me: if we don’t help these people find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can’t save the chimps or anything else.”

Goodall was speaking at a session of the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit dedicated to the digital platform UpLink, which is bringing together young people, entrepreneurs and investors to help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

‘We can’t do it alone’

She said UpLink shows we can start to solve the world’s problems together.

“We face unprecedented crises in the world today. We can’t do it alone. We need everybody who cares about future generations to link up and try and work out a new green economy that is less destructive of the environment upon which we depend.”

The Jane Goodall Institute began a programme that now involves 104 villages around Gombe, to teach locals about agroforestry, permaculture, tree nurseries.

“They’ve understood that protecting the forest is protecting their own future, not just the wildlife,” Goodall explains.

And technology is playing a key role, as volunteers from the villages have learned to use smartphones to monitor the health of the forest.

“It’s worked. If you fly over Gombe today, you don’t see those bare hills, the forest has come back,” she says.

The programme has been rolled out to six other countries. One of the most important parts has been scholarships to keep girls in schools during and after puberty, as well as empowering women through education and microcredit programmes.

‘3 major challenges’

The climate crisis threatens the existence of everything on the planet, including human existence, Goodall believes. And before we can begin to tackle it, there are three major challenges we have to overcome:

  1. “While people are living in abject poverty, they’re going to destroy the environment to grow food to feed their family, fish the last fish, buy the cheapest junk food. They can’t afford to say, ‘Did this harm the environment?’
  2. “We have to solve the problem of the unsustainable lifestyles of the rest of us.”
  3. “We have to recognize there are 7.2 billion people on the planet and already we’re using up natural resources in some places faster than nature can restore them. In 2050, it’s estimated there will be nearly 10 billion of us. So what’s going to happen? We cannot afford to put that aside because it’s politically incorrect. We’ve got to think about it.”

‘We have disrespected the natural world’

The way we have treated the natural environment has also played a large part in the creation of the current pandemic, Goodall believes. “The tragedy is this pandemic has been predicted and to some extent caused by us because we have disrespected the natural world and animals. We have created environments that make it much easier for a pathogen to jump from an animal to us, where it may cause a new zoonotic disease such as COVID-19.

“Unfortunately, COVID-19 was incredibly contagious and has raced around the world, causing so much suffering, so much economic chaos.”

But, to her, climate change represents an even greater challenge.

“To a great extent, it’s the same disrespect of the natural world that has led to the climate crisis. This planet has finite natural resources and we have been plundering them faster than Mother Nature can restore them.”

‘The window is closing’

“We have to realise we are part of the natural world and we depend upon it. We have been destroying the natural world, destroying forests and trees that can absorb carbon dioxide and polluting the ocean that can also absorb carbon dioxide. And both forests and oceans give us the oxygen we need to breathe.

“We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction, we depend on healthy ecosystems and the healthy ecosystem depends on biodiversity. Gradually we are poisoning the land with chemicals and we’re destroying so many environments.

“We need to somehow move into some of these innovations of science, like solar and wind energy. Otherwise, for my grandchildren and theirs, the future is more than grim, it’s very dark. We mustn’t let that happen. We have a window of time that’s closing and we need everyone who cares to get together and find solutions – now.”