Safe drinking water act

Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 and has been amended twice, in 1986 and 1996. The Act covers all source of drinking water used by more than 25 people, for a total of more than 160,000 public drinking water systems.

Prior to the passage of the Act, drinking water was subject to minimal federal regulations that had been passed in the early part of the 20th century. Advances in agriculture and industry, however, had increased the amount of chemicals that were making their way into public water systems. A survey in 1969 revealed that only 60% of the nation's water systems met Public Health Service Standards for drinking water. Clearly, municipalities were not adequately protecting their citizens. Small systems in particular performed poorly (EPA, 1999), as keeping the system modern and defect-free was typically viewed as an onerous cost.

As a result of these findings and growing concern for the long-term health implications of chemical runoff on the environment, the federal government created a series of acts to protect the environment, among which was the Safe Water Drinking Act. The Act authorized the EPA, under its Ground Water and Drinking Water unit, to enforce a new set of federal standards for drinking water healthfulness.

The regulations governed acceptable levels of contaminants for public water systems, which are classified according to a number of criteria including size and usage patterns. There are three types of violations possible, and the EPA is responsible for enforcement of these regulations. The Act was enacted in two steps. The first created a set of interim standards, which in turn were based on the Public Health Service standards that had been laid out in 1962. The second step was to revise these standards. This took place in 1975, wherein levels were set for a number of chemicals, turbidity, and coliform. Further standards were set for radionuclides and trihalomethanes in 1976 and 1979 respectively (Ibid).

The Act was subject to significant overhaul in 1986. The Act had been subject to minor changes in several years in the interim, but 1986 represented the most significant change the Act has seen. The EPA had been developing new regulations at a pace that was deemed too slow by Congress. Only one of the interim standards set in 1975 had been updated. There were also deficiencies in the implementation. Microbial contamination had not been sufficiently addressed. By the early 1980s, synthetic chemicals were being found in drinking water with increasing frequency. The 1986 Amendment therefore addressed these issues. Maximum levels for many contaminants were either set or updated. The Federal government also took a greater role in the provision of drinking water by compelling the EPA to establish regulations within specific time frames.

Further amendments to the law were enacted in subsequent years, governing specific issues that had not been addressed in the original legislation. New components included stricter crackdown on coliform, the elimination of giardia, legionella and other pathogens and rules governing pipes and welding, specifically to curtail the use of lead and copper pipes.

The 1996 amendments brought the legislation into the modern era. These included specifics on funding, new risk-based criteria for standard-setting, prevention and further strengthening of the EPA's enforcement authority. The funding was necessary in particular for small water systems that were having difficulty funding the required upgrades on their own. The amendments also included provisions about public notification and annual compliance reports.