Title: Amending the Safe Drinking Water Act: View from Congress Subhead: The outcome is not assured by Henry Waxman In 1986, the last time Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act, the legislative process was a model of cooperative progress. But times have changed. The drinking-water debate in 1994 may be a legislative donnybrook. On one side are water companies seeking to relax regulations; on the other are millions of Americans concerned about contamination of the water they drink. The American public became all too aware of the potential consequences of contamination last year, when problems in Milwaukee elevated the issue as never before. In March of 1993, that city's water supply was contaminated with an intestinal parasite that made more than 400,000 ill. For a week, more than 800,000 residents were without potable tap water. Drinking water became a precious commodity. In the end, more than 40 people died. Many remain seriously ill even today. Shortly after this tragedy, a senior EPA official conceded to The New York Times that, given the existing drinking-water protection system, "what happened in Milwaukee is likely to happen again, but I can't predict where." There have, of course, been other incidents, including contamination problems that led to boil orders in the Washington, DC area, and parts of New York city. Also, although they have not received the same press attention as the problems in Milwaukee, New York, and Washington, many smaller towns have been affected by contamination incidents afflicting tens of thousands in Texas, Oregon, Missouri, and Georgia. In fact, a June 1991 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that "35 percent of the reported gastrointestinal illnesses among . . . tapwater drinkers were water-related and preventable." (See Vol. 81 at 703.) Across our nation, the message is clear: Safe drinking water can no longer be taken for granted. Polls show that drinking water safety is a growing public concern, with one industry survey showing that more than 80 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for water meeting federal standards, while less than 2 percent agree with the industry position that federal standards are too strict (Consumer Attitude Survey of Water Quality Issues, American Water Works Assoc. Research Foundation, November 1993). Probably the single most widespread and serious drinking water problem in the United States is not microbial contamination, but contamination from byproducts of the disinfection process, such as chloroform, that can cause cancer. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and other institutions have associated these contaminants with more than 10,000 cancer cases each year, including nearly 20 percent of all rectal cancers and 10 percent of all bladder cancers. Lead contamination is another major problem. Last year, EPA found that more than 800 cities exceeded the lead action level established under the SDWA. These high lead levels are a special danger to small children, whose developing nervous systems can be altered by lead, resulting in reduced intelligence and/or a variety of other serious problems. Some insights into the nation's drinking-water problems can be gained from a recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Using industry data, NRDC found that 90 percent of the large public water systems in the United States continue to use technology developed before World War I to clean their water. (See boxed article on page 15.) An additional shortcoming common to most systems is that treatment plants are operated by inadequately trained staffs with minimal oversight. A two-year General Accounting Office (GAO) study concluded last year that states, all but one of which have authority for assuring drinking-water safety under the SDWA, do not undertake even the routine inspections necessary to assure that systems are operating safely. In most cases, state supervision was found to be incomplete or superficial, and many states were found to rely on inadequately trained personnel to review water-system safety (GAO, Drinking Water: Key Quality Assurance Program is Flawed and Underfunded, April 1993). Given these problems, it is perhaps understandable that many cities have problems with even the basic necessity to keep human and animal wastes out of drinking water. As mentioned earlier, the intestinal parasite that contaminated Milwaukee's water is believed to have come from animal or human feces entering Lake Michigan. Potential contamination from this same organism has prompted "boil orders" in a number of other localities, including two in Racine, Wisconsin. Even worse, water systems across the country have been coping with a variety of other contamination problems thought to be associated with sewage. In Washington, DC, fecal coliform has been found in tap water on more than one occasion. In New York City, another waste-related contaminant, the bacteria e. coli, showed up unexpectedly last summer. And last Christmas, the bacteria salmonella found its way into the water of the small Missouri town of Gideon, leaving half the residents ill with vomiting and diarrhea. The range of serious problems plaguing our nation's drinking- water systems must be addressed by Congress in the ongoing effort to amend the SDWA. President Clinton has proposed a broad new program to do just that. The Clinton Safe Drinking Water Initiative would provide for more financial and technical assistance to water suppliers, assure better training for system operators, streamline the law's requirements, provide special relief for small water systems, and guarantee more effective oversight. More than that, the Clinton administration has put its money where its mouth is and secured a 1994 budget that includes, for the first time ever, a major new funding program to help systems meet drinking-water standards. Enactment of the Clinton proposal, however, is not assured. The President's initiative has been undermined by extremists in the drinking-water supply industry, with support from some state and local groups. Despite recent contamination problems, they stubbornly insist that the law's health standards are the problem and should be rolled back. Water suppliers, many of which are municipalities, argue that current requirements to provide safe water are "unfunded mandates" and should be weakened or eliminated. Their rhetoric on unfunded mandates may sound populist, but their ideological intransigence ignores public safety and will only lead to a legislative stalemate. Legislation they support in the House and in the Senate would dramatically undermine health-protection efforts by rolling back standards, eliminating requirements for water systems to inform consumers when standards are violated, broadly weakening the existing requirements to reduce lead contamination, eliminating even the basic requirements for water systems to test for contamination levels, and authorizing broad variances from the act's requirements. I take a different view. One of the most fundamental responsibilities of government is to provide safe drinking water to all Americans, even where the water supplier is a local government. Parents are concerned about their children's health, not about faddish political slogans like unfunded mandates. The unpleasant truth is that we are confronted with glaring shortcomings in the program for assuring that the nation's drinking water is free of contamination by dangerous substances. Congress shouldn't weaken vitally important health standards, but it should pass legislation that will strengthen health protection and provide for more financial and technical assistance to water suppliers. The President has sought to respond to the nation's drinking- water problems with an approach that will reduce the burden on water suppliers and provide greater public-health protection. That is the path to restoring public confidence in our drinking water.# (Representative Waxman (D-California) chairs the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment.)