ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 6, 1996 TAG: 9606060040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
AMERICANS expect their drinking water to be safe. If it isn't, they should know. If they know, they can act to protect their health - individually, by buying a filter or bottled water, or collectively, by pressuring suppliers to make it safe.
Common sense? Yes. Yet, when the Senate voted to reauthorize the nation's Safe Drinking Water Act last year, it failed to include a provision to ensure that consumers would be told of hazardous contaminants in their tap water. And no such provision has been added to House Commerce Chairman Thomas Bliley's draft as his committee prepares to take up the bill.
Consumers probably assume they would be told if their drinking water had anything in it that might make them or their families sick. Some would be told. But some would not, because utilities are required to tell customers of contaminants only if a federal health standard has been violated.
If there is no standard, there can be no violation. If there is no violation, no report has to be made - to the Environmental Protection Agency or to the people drinking the water.
As it happens, many hazards aren't regulated by outdated federal standards. One is cryptosporidium, a fecal-borne parasite that killed more than 100 people in Milwaukee and made a quarter of the city's population - about 400,000 people - sick in 1993. (The EPA now has ordered the largest municipal water suppliers to test for the micro-organism for 18 months in an effort to assess its prevalence.)
Such serious incidents have led to bipartisan support for requiring that the public be told, in understandable language, if their drinking water contains contaminants that may pose a health risk. Still, Bliley, the Republican from Richmond, resists.
Opponents worry that requiring such notice would be expensive and alarmist, giving consumers information they wouldn't understand and creating unwarranted fears. Water suppliers would be responsible, though, for presenting the information in understandable language with a reasonable assessment of the hazard posed. As for the cost, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would be 3 to 20 cents per household per year.
Surely consumers are willing to drink - safely - to that.
Correction
The Tiananmen Square massacre occurred in 1989. The year was incorrect in an editorial Tuesday.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB