The Safe Drinking Water Act (1), amended in 1996 (2)
includes Section 114, i.e., specific consumer protection provisions
that water suppliers are required to notify the public of contaminants
and other dangers in their drinking water. Mary Tiemann, a
specialist in Environmental Policy at the Congressional Research Service
explains these provisions in simpler terms (see summary below from 3).
Simply
put, US drinking water customers have the right to know if their tap
water's contaminated and it's the duty and responsibility of their water
supplier to provide them this information as a matter of course. In
particular, they have the right to demand and get these annual
right-to-know/Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR). According to the EPA (4),
'A CCR is an annual water quality report delivered by community water systems to their customers. The CCR includes information on source water, the levels of detected contaminants, compliance with drinking water rules, and some educational language.The reports are due to customers by July 1st of each year'.
Of
course, all these safeguards were literally blown out of the water in
Flint, Michigan. Looks like a city in receivership is literally beyond
the pale of democracy, run by an unelected political appointee who’s
wholly unaccountable to the public. So, first order of business would be
to flee a city in receivership like a bat out of hell. Of course, this
option's not available for the poor, who're screwed six ways till
Sunday.
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) Research Suggests Drinking Water Quality Varies Greatly From City To City
In
2003, the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) published a
peer-reviewed study of the drinking water systems in 19 US cities (see
figure and table below from 5)
This
13 year old study found source water protection ranges from excellent
in cities like Seattle to high marks in cities like Boston, San
Francisco, Denver to threatened by runoff and industrial or sewage
contamination in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los
Angeles, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego,
Washington, D.C (see below from 5).
The NRDC recommends consumers help protect their drinking water by
getting involved in community decision making about water resources,
attending meetings of their local water supplier, check CCRs, and
contact their supplier for details. Bottomline, according to the NRDC,
residents need to know how their cities are getting their drinking
water, specifically, that
- Sources are protected from pollution
- Pipes are sound and well-maintained
- Modern treatment facilities are a must
In 2013, the American Society for Civil Engineers' Report Card for America's Infrastructure gave the US a D meaning poor in the drinking water category (6).
The NRDC's investigation also suggests CCR data cannot be accepted at
face value. Flint shows local and state governments can't be trusted.
Neither can the EPA. Thus, consumers should probably exercise caution as a way of life.
For e.g., use filters on their water taps, specifically filters that
reduce major contaminants such as microbial cysts, metals like lead and
mercury, industrial chemicals like carbon tetrachloride, herbicides and
pesticides, and chlorination by-products such as trihalomethanes (TTHM).
A more conservative approach would be to use filtered and boiled water
for cooking and drinking, habits second nature for a person like me who
grew up in a developing country. Of course, as sociologist Andrew Szasz reports in his book, Shopping Our Way To safety. How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves, through the process of 'inverted quarantine', year on year Americans drink more bottled water anyway because they already believe tap water's 'contaminated with chemicals that can make us ill'
(7).
According to Szasz, from drinking one gallon of bottled water per
person per year in 1975, Americans drank 26 gallon per person per year
in 2005.
Things will only change for the better
if some high-level politicians and bureaucrats resign or are
jailed/fined or otherwise severely penalized for what they allowed to
happen in Flint, Michigan. This would send a message to others in the
water supply business from private business to local government to
federal regulators including the EPA that they are going to be held
accountable if they fail to provide safe, drinking water to their
constituents. If something along these lines doesn't happen, no one in
the US can count on their drinking water to be safe. If water suppliers
in one place get away with supplying toxic muck, why wouldn’t others
follow suit?
Bibliography
3. Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA): A Summary of the Act and Its Major
Requirements. Mary Tiemann, Specialist in Environmental Policy, February
5, 2014. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mi
5. What's on Tap?: Grading Drinking Water in US Cities. 2003. http://www.nrdc.org/water
6. American Society for Civil Engineers, 2013. http://www.infrastructure
7. Szasz, Andrew. Shopping our way to safety: How we changed from
protecting the environment to protecting ourselves. U of Minnesota
Press, 2007.
Further reading:
https://www.quora.com/What-should-people-in-other-cities-do-to-protect-themselves-against-water-being-poisoned-like-it-is-in-Flint-Michigan/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
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