Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 17, 1995                   TAG: 9510170026
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GERARD W. HIGGINS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COMMON GROUND ON SAFER DRINKING WATER

The bitter rhetoric that characterized the debate over the Clean Water Act (which deals with wastewater treatment and disposal) will be different, we hope, with the Safe Drinking Water Act. There is good reason to think it will be.

As Congress considers the out-of-date law that regulates tap water, advocates both of environmental protection and of regulatory reform have an opportunity to strengthen the law while streamlining cumbersome regulations. The common ground is provided by those who have served as the guardians of America's safe drinking-water for more than a century - engineers, chemists, waterworks operators and utility managers who work for the public and in the public interest to supply the highest standard of drinking water to the American people.

The nation's public water systems are working in concert with governors, state legislatures, regulatory officials, mayors and other local officials to advocate reforms to the Safe Drinking Water Act to make it, above all else, protective of public health.

The problems with the current law come from well-intentioned but outdated regulations. For example, the current law requires federal, state and local governments to monitor for specific contaminants regardless of whether those contaminants have ever or will ever occur in drinking water. Such superfluous requirements hamper efforts by public water systems to monitor for the contaminants that do occur.

The current law requires regulation of 83 contaminants, plus another 25 new contaminants every three years, regardless of whether they occur in drinking water or pose a threat to public health. Yet there is no federal standard for Cryptosporidium, the disease-causing organism that contributed to the death of 104 people in Milwaukee in 1993.

If the nation wants to avoid an outbreak of disease for another, as yet unknown, microbe, it needs to make sensible and workable changes in current legislation. Maintaining the status quo, as some critics of tap-water reform would like, will only make it likelier that another incident similar to the one in Milwaukee will happen somewhere else.

Congress should direct the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate substances that actually occur in our water and are of public-health concern. Contrary to what some critics of the bill may say about "weakening" standards, those reforms will result in even stronger standards than currently exist for some contaminants. The law would focus on cracking down on the real-world threats to our water supply.

Room for agreement also lies in the need to provide a means for protecting sources of drinking water from contamination, and changing public-notice and education requirements so they will provide people with meaningful information about what is in their drinking water, rather than the technical legalese currently required.

Public water utilities are dedicated to guarding the future of America's drinking water. We're your neighbors, not Washington bureaucrats. We know what works and what doesn't in our communities. We are passionate about protecting the drinking-water supply. Through the American Water Works Association Research Foundation, public water systems have led the way in funding Cryptosporidium research, to the tune of more than $15 million, and in educating members on the latest technology and water-treatment techniques. At the urging of the association, the Centers for Disease Control and the EPA recently published guidance for the immuno-compromised population to avoid exposure to Cryptosporidium from drinking water.

Public-water systems will continue to guard the future of America's drinking water. We support the reform measures as a way to cut excessive regulation that gets in the way of meeting those high standards.

When it comes to charting the future of safe drinking water in America, we hope this Congress and all interested parties will come together to approve sensible reforms to protect our drinking water.

Gerard W. Higgins of Lynchburg chairs the Virginia section of the American Water Works Association.