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The Spanish Armada—A Different View
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8833.1998.tb08442.x
Subject(s) - safe drinking water act , agency (philosophy) , engineering , political science , maximum contaminant level , environmental planning , environmental engineering , environmental protection , law , groundwater , environmental science , water quality , sociology , ecology , social science , geotechnical engineering , biology
In this column, Cynthia Dougherty, director of US Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, debates Jack Hoffbuhr's March Waterscape column, “An Armada of Regulations,” in which he used an analogy about the defeat of the Spanish Armada to express concerns about the future of the US regulatory program for drinking water. In Dougherty's opinion, Hoffbuhr viewed the Armada as being drinking water regulations that must be defeated to ensure public health protection. Dougherty takes the stance that the Spanish Armada represents the pre‐1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) process of drinking water regulation. In this scenario, the adoption of the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) amendments, like the defeat of the armada, marked a dramatic historical change in course and significantly improved the drinking water regulation program. Specific improvements are discussed.