Can you still drink the water?

What began as a straightforward (and long overdue) move to reauthorize the Safe Drinking Water Act has become an intriguing political drama that may be much more complex considering the possible risks, potential costs, and intended benefits to consumers and taxpayers. The process began on 8 September 1993, when EPA Administrator Carol Browner, on behalf of the Clinton administration , set forth 10 recommendations for the reauthorization legislation, backing them up with a 127-page report, "Tech-nical and Economic Capacity of States and Public Water Systems to Implement Drinking Water Regulations." Environ-mentalists have had some reservations, but they largely support the recommendations. Since 1991, when the five-year life span of the 1986 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) expired, the unchanged laws have been carried on from year to year under continuing resolutions (the mechanism whereby laws stay in place after their expiration if Congress can't agree to renew them officially, or hasn't time to). EPA has continued to carry out the provisions "as best we can," says a spokesperson. According to the spokesper-son, many water systems are "found to be in noncompliance," meaning that 80% of the time, they have not been tested or the results have not been reported as required. But the lack of information should not be presumed to mean no dangerous contaminants are present. The SDWA probably affects more Americans directly every day than any other piece of legislation. While the Clean Water Act covers what goes into the water-discharges from industry and waste treatment plants, runoff from farms, dredged material, and so forth-the SDWA regulates the water that comes out of the kitchen tap, whose quality depends on freedom from microbial agents, dissolved minerals like lead and other metals, poisonous organic compounds, and other potentially harmful substances. The more than 200,000 public water systems within the purview of the SDWA serve 243 million people. A few urban systems are huge, but 61% serve between 25 and 500 customers in rural areas, mobile home parks, or housing subdivisions. There's virtually no limit to what modern technology can remove from drinking water, provided someone is willing to pay for 1 or more of the 22 technologies that EPA has listed as the "best available tech-nology" for at least one contaminant. These include tried-and-true procedures like filtration, aeration, and chlorination, as well as more exotic methods like reverse osmosis through special membranes and filters with activated …