Trouble At The Waterworks
Nichols, Christina
BY CHRISTINA NICHOLS Every morning around 7:00 a.m., Howard "Woody" Woodward drives his blue Chevy to the Myersville, Maryland, water-treatment plant for an hour-long ritual of water monitoring....
...Warren says the Government should institute a Federal financing program for rural water-treatment facilities on a per-capita needs basis...
...But state budgets for drinking-water treatment were never large—they totaled $74 million in 1987...
...But his turbidity meter doesn't really work very well, and his gallon meter is so far gone that he calibrates gallons by the clock radio that sits on top of the tank...
...For twenty-two years, Lay ran the water system for Pine Brook Hills, Colorado, which has 350 households...
...Some state regulators are doing no better...
...In small rural areas, water-treatment facilities often have neither the technology nor the funds to contain the toxins...
...You've got to take care of the water system," Woody says...
...The EPA has tried to accommodate the smaller systems by bending the regulations, but this has infuriated environmentalists...
...The wastewater industry was in the shape ten years ago that the drinking-water industry is in today...
...However, "most violations occur in small systems," Dean admits...
...But the cost of abiding by the amendments may be prohibitive...
...She had little contact with state water authorities, and none with Federal water officials...
...And while the Federal Government has finally enacted tight regulations to ensure safe drinking water, it has not provided any funding to enable water systems to abide by the regulations...
...In Boston, for example, preliminary estimates for installing filtration run at $237 million to $299 million, with an annual operation cost between $ 12 million and $ 16 million...
...population gets its water from these systems...
...If something goes wrong, I'd never know it until the next day, or until someone calls me...
...That it's okay for people in rural areas to drink bad water...
...The Water Works Association says the requirements "promote the intimidating sense of an impending tidal wave of regulations that will suddenly and completely overwhelm small systems...
...When he arrives at the plant, he tests the water in the jug for chlorine, turbidity, and ph levels...
...When chlorine combines with organic matter—such as rotting leaves—in water systems, it forms an array of substances known as trihalo-methanes (THMs...
...We're treating water today like we did in the '30s...
...We've got a handle on testing and monitoring," says Ray Barg, director of New Jersey's water-supply program...
...The 1986 amendments may cost the states an additional $200 million through 1992, and annual extra costs of up to $ 130 million for administration alone, says the EPA...
...It's just a matter of priorities...
...He knows how many hours it's been since he last checked the tank, and he knows how Trouble at the Waterworks Too dirty to drink, too costly to clean many gallons per hour the system uses, so he does simple multiplication to figure out the number of gallons consumed...
...He works about an hour a day, seven days a week, at the water plant (and he doubles as one of two sewer operators for Myersville...
...What does that mean...
...In 1987, twenty-one states took absolutely no enforcement action against violators of the Safe Drinking Water Act, despite more than 100,000 violations affecting nearly forty million Americans...
...New Yorkers can expect a similar jolt, since the city doesn't filter its water, either...
...Most of the time she ran the system as a volunteer...
...These include access to low-interest loans from state revolving-loan funds, state bond pools, and state-funded bond insurance...
...Federal funding would help, but there isn't any...
...In some states, such as Montana and North Carolina, more than 60 per cent of the population is served by small systems...
...The Safe Drinking Water Act has nothing of the kind...
...States allocate their scarce resources between two kinds of systems: Large, municipal treatment facilities, serving tens of thousands of customers, and the small, rural facilities typically serving fewer than 3,300...
...That averages out to between $1,000 and $1,200 per household in 1992, a painful leap from current rates of about $375 a year...
...Environmental Protection Agency...
...Of course, EPA still can't tell you with certainty how many water systems there are out there...
...The 1986 amendments for organics alone will bring about a revolution in water treatment," says Jacqueline Warren, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council...
...We also require stricter standards than EPA for volatile organic chemicals...
...Hinckley knows the reality, however...
...But it poses little damage to the public health, she added: "Overall, we think the risk is low...
...All told, about 11 per cent of the U.S...
...Woodward carries a white plastic jug filled with water from his home across town from the plant, which services the 200 houses in Myersville...
...Small systems are in big trouble," he says...
...Once a month he takes a water sample to the local lab to check for chlorine and fecal coliform, and he sends his report to the Federal Government...
...With a large industrial base and dense population, we've got to...
...Dozens of the toxic substances buried in landfills and poured into earthen pits are not covered by Federal regulations designed to protect underground water supplies," EPA admitted in 1987...
...It benefited from tremendous subsidies, and we solved a lot of problems...
...The companies buried another 3.9 billion pounds of pollutants underground—in, over, or around the aquifers that supply half the nation's drinking water...
...Every three years, according to the amendments, EPA must develop a list of twenty-five new contaminants for possible regulation...
...He pries off the lid, grabs a sawed-off plastic jug that is strapped to a PVC pipe with duct tape, and dips it into the tank...
...Too often, water treatment becomes a numbers game: Hit the systems with the most first...
...Then he goes to the 17,000-gallon tank that stands just outside the plant...
...No more...
...New York and Maryland have established statewide units that help small systems operate and maintain their facilities...
...All too often, however, the raw water is no good at all...
...Most small systems will have to raise their rates, ignore the new regulations, or go out of business...
...But the price of clean water may be out of reach...
...If they can't, it's time to get out—or go into hiding...
...A little sand filtration, a little chlorine...
...were in the water supply, it would be in deep trouble...
...That worries us, and it should worry Congress...
...They were the enforcers...
...Since 1974, more than 2,100 different contaminants have been discovered in public-water systems...
...Ironically, health officials discovered that even treatment technologies designed to spare us from widespread disease may themselves be carcinogenic...
...Many systems, including those in fifteen large metropolitan areas, lack such basics as filtration...
...Even large water systems will experience "rate shock" when installing treatment facilities necessary to meet the standards required by the 1986 amendments...
...In Maine, we're averaging $ 15 to $50 a quarter right now...
...The water in Myersville comes from several springs and Little Catoctin Creek...
...The intent of the laws was not to base water quality on the population size," charges Warren of the Natural Resources Defense Council...
...Most of the small, rural water systems operate on budgets of less than $5,000 a year...
...In Pennsylvania and Washington, state water officials have launched programs to assess the compliance requirements of small systems...
...By 1986, EPA had set standards for only twenty-two of them...
...But you tell people they'll have to pay $275 to $500 a year for it, and they'll balk...
...industry dumped into the water systems, 140 were not covered by discharge permits...
...Small operators need support," she says...
...But with more people and more pollution, more cleanup will be needed...
...When you work for a small system, the raw water needs to be as good as it can be...
...They are saying, 'We're not going to do a goddamn thing...
...The National Cancer Institute has linked a common THM, chloroform, to increases in bladder cancer among those who drink from publicly treated water...
...Of the 230 poisons that U.S...
...Since 1974, forty-eight states had established standards for contaminants and monitoring schedules that were at least as stringent as the Federal Government's...
...Well, 95 per cent of small systems produce good water," says Lay...
...Some states have initiated programs of both technical and financial assistance in response to the special needs of small water systems...
...EPA is currently saying it will cost $5.8 billion total...
...But the Federal Government's unwillingness to loosen the purse strings casts such plans into doubt...
...The size of this toxic onslaught is "un-acceptably high and far beyond" what EPA officials expected, said Linda Fisher, assistant administrator for the agency...
...Pennsylvania, for instance, provides an integrated funding program with an array of options for small-system loans...
...Between 1971 and 1985, 111,228 cases of waterborne diseases were reported, representing more incidents than in any fifteen-year period since 1920...
...Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Inc...
...If you cleaned up the large systems," asserts Norman Dean, a senior analyst with the National Wildlife Federation, "you'd slash 75 per cent of the number of people affected by drinking-water violations...
...Without Federal subsidies, water-treatment operators in rural areas will be forced to hide from EPA and state regulators...
...This damn thing is so antiquated there's no alarms on the place," says Woody...
...But there should be a limit on what small communities have to pay, perhaps linked to the community's median income...
...Neglect that's gone on for a century is going to be on the backs of current ratepayers," laments Jack Sullivan of the American Water Works Association...
...In addition, the amendments require states or systems to monitor for a large number of unregulated contaminants...
...By January 1989, EPA must promulgate rules regarding filtration for untreated surface water and disinfection treatment for all public water supplies...
...A planned $7.5 billion in water-system upgrades will drive rates up to near-Boston levels...
...Woody is sixty-two, and he's been the waste-water manager for Myersville for four years, first as a volunteer and now at $8,000 a year...
...There is no heavy industry or agribusiness nearby, so the water is relatively free of toxins...
...Some twenty-five to thirty states have instituted alternative funding mechanisms for small systems...
...We're going to ignore it,' " says Sullivan...
...When he's through, he writes his figures down for state regulators...
...And that's putting it mildly...
...corporations poured 550 million pounds of toxic waste directly into the nation's lakes, streams, and rivers, according to the U.S...
...I think I associated them with the IRS...
...If some small system installs a filtration plant, rates'll go up to $500 a year...
...The cleanup began in 1974, when Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, authorizing the EPA to set and enforce standards for hazardous substances in drinking water...
...If raw water doesn't meet the basic requirements, it gets very expensive," says Duke Martin, water manager for Emmits-burg, Maryland, population 2,200...
...But the contamination continued...
...The states will be hard hit by these new regulations...
...But these funding mechanisms fall far short of the total price tag...
...People still have the notion that their water is pristine, it's free, it's a God-given right," says Wade Miller, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators...
...When the Clean Water Act was passed, Congress told communities they had to install at least secondary-treatment facilities for waste water, and it provided a multi-billion-dollar pot to help pay 75 per cent of the cost, whether the community needed it or not," explains Warren...
...They seemed unapproachable," Lay recalls...
...We find the money for everything we want in this country," says Warren...
...Approximately 30,000 small water systems nationwide serve fewer than 3,300 customers each...
...On the high side, it might run $8 billion per year for the next twenty years," estimates Jack Sullivan, deputy executive director of the American Water Works Association...
...It characterizes the new regulations as "simply unapproachable in terms of their complexity and downright laughable in terms of their otherworldliness...
...EPA dealt with the THM standard by writing out communities with less than 10,000 in population from the regs...
...Now Lay is seeking assistance for small water-works systems...
...if toxins Christina Nichols is a free-lance writer in Washington, D.C...
...And it should encourage regionalization, whereby a single testing facility would serve an entire county...
...He performs the same tests on the tank water...
...We test more frequently than EPA requires...
...We're past the time of freebies, I know that...
...It worries Trudy Lay, director of the small-systems program of the American Water Works Association...
...Water is such a valuable commodity," agrees Wade Miller of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators...
...In June 1986, Congress passed amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act calling for EPA to establish primary drinking-water standards for a total of eighty-three contaminants by June 1989...
...That's why Myersville is lucky...
...bristles Wallace Hinckley, former director of Maine's drinking-water program...
...In 1987, U.S...
Vol. 53 • June 1989 • No. 6
