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While drinking water in the United States is some of the safest in the world, that doesn’t mean that everyone should be drinking the water that comes out of their tap. Water scientist Joan Rose reports in the Great Lakes Echo that 43 states have toxic fluoride contamination in their water (PFAS), and many agricultural communities face arsenic and nitrate contamination from agricultural runoff.
Every single person on the planet needs to drink water in order to survive, and for many families, buying bottled water becomes an unfair financial burden. Under the Safe Water Drinking Act (SDWA), the EPA has been able to execute a water quality management program that keeps most of our tap water safe to drink. However, some communities are slipping through the cracks and many citizens are unwittingly drinking contaminated water. <Read more>[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Category: Water News
New EPA Drinking Water Grant Programs
For More Information, Click Here!
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the availability of nearly $87 million in grant funding to assist states, tribes, and territories with improving drinking water. States, tribes, and territories are eligible to receive funding from two new EPA drinking water grant programs established by the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN):
- Under EPA’s new Voluntary Lead Testing in Schools and Child Care grant program, EPA will award $43.7 million in grants to fund testing for lead in drinking water at schools and child care programs. Testing results carried out using grant funds must be made publicly available.
- Under EPA’s new Assistance for Small and Disadvantaged Communities grant program, EPA will award $42.8 million in grants to support underserved communities with bringing public drinking water systems into compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Funding can also be used for conducting household water quality testing, including testing for unregulated contaminants.
For more information, please visit: https://www.epa.gov/safewater/grants.
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Oregon DEQ denies Jordan Cove LNG water quality permit. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality on Monday denied a water quality certification for the proposed Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal and its feeder pipeline, the Pacific Connector pipeline, though the agency left the door open for the company to reapply.
In a letter Monday to the project backers, the agency said “DEQ does not have a reasonable assurance that the construction and authorization of the project will comply with applicable Oregon water quality standards.” Read more.
The study suggests that as the Portland Harbor Superfund site is cleaned-up, salmon recovery efforts in the Willamette will get a major boost. Read more here
For years, Diane Wilson has tried to get Formosa Plastics Corp. to stop discharging plastic pellets from its sprawling petrochemical complex on the Central Texas coast. This week, she’s getting her day in court. Read more ...
An examination of monitoring data available for the first time concludes that 91 percent of U.S. coal-fired power plants with monitoring data are contaminating groundwater with unsafe levels of toxic pollutants. Read more here
Categories
MN Preventing Lead Poisoning
It would cost more than $4 billion to get the lead out of Minnesota’s drinking water, but it could bring a 2-for-1 return on the investment.”As we see in many other areas of public health, preventing a health problem is more cost effective than waiting for a health problem to develop and then treating it,” Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said. Read More.
Every day many millions of gallons of water loaded with arsenic, lead and other toxic metals flow from some of the most contaminated mining sites in the U.S. and into surrounding streams and ponds without being treated, The Associated Press has found. Read more.
Last week the EPA announced its “Action Plan” for a group of chemicals referred to as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS chemicals. In its news release, the agency described this effort as “historic” and as the “most comprehensive cross-agency plan to address an emerging chemical of concern ever undertaken by EPA.” However, environmental advocates and people who live in communities contaminated by PFAS chemicals were not impressed by the agency’s plan. Group after group released news statements blasting the plan as inadequate and lacking action, lamenting the agency’s failure to create a standard to regulate PFAS chemicals in drinking water.
In response to questions from reporters, EPA expressed the need to set a standard that would be defensible in court and promised that the agency will develop a standard “according to where the science directs us.” While this might make a good sound bite, it falls far short of what environmental advocates and people who live in communities contaminated by PFAS chemicals had hoped for.
The National PFAS Contamination Coalition, a network of communities impacted by PFAS contamination described the agency’s plan as “woefully inadequate for those who have been suffering from exposure to contamination for decades” and that “it fails to prevent current and future exposure to PFAS in the environment.”
The EPA’s failure to set a health standard for PFAS chemicals is nothing new for the agency. They have not issued a new standard for drinking water in over 22 years since the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1996. Andrew Wheeler, Acting Administrator of EPA, described setting a standard for PFAS chemicals as “charting new territory” at the agency’s press conference. Really? Has it been so long that the agency no longer recalls what it needs to do to issue a new standard?
Not having a health standard is huge. Without a standard, there is no clear legal handle that the agency can use to force a polluter to clean up contaminated water to the standard or to require that a water company to provide water that does not have PFAS at the level of the standard. With only a health advisory, the agency has no standing to force a polluter to take the necessary steps to clean up contaminated water or require a water company to provide water that does not have PFAS at the level of the advisory. They can ask. They can recommend. But that cannot require. At least not legally.
More study and analysis as called for in the EPA “Action” plan, will not change this scenario. The agency needs to stop stalling, recall its roots and issue a health standard for PFAS chemicals. The communities that have been contaminated by PFAS chemicals and the American people deserve nothing less.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has made confronting California’s contaminated drinking water a top priority early in his term in office.
Read More.