By James Laughlin, Editor
It could be said that the U.S. water suppliers are stagnating. For the past three years, EPA has reported that 91 percent of U.S. public water system customers were supplied with drinking water that met all existing health-based standards. While 91 percent isn't a terrible number, EPA is shooting for a goal of 95 percent compliance by 2005.
EPA recently released a brief report that includes data on drinking water systems, violations reported by violation type and other details. The report, "Factoids: Drinking Water and Ground Water Statistics for 2001," is based on information from the Safe Drinking Water Information System/Federal version (SDWIS/FED) data. It is available on the Internet at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/data/getdata.html.
According to the report, there are approximately 165,000 public drinking water systems in the United States. Each of these systems regularly supplies drinking water to at least 25 people or 15 service connections.
The report includes a series of tables that group water systems into categories that show their similarities and differences. For example, one table shows that most people in the US (263 million) get their water from a community water system. There are approximately 54,000 community water systems, but just seven percent of those systems (3,782) serve 81 percent of the population. A second table shows that more water systems have ground water than surface water as a source - but more people drink from a surface water system. Other tables break down these national numbers by state, territory, and EPA region.
According to the report, the greatest number of health-based violations in 2001 was reported by Washington state, with 287. It was followed by Virginia with 222 and Missouri with 216. Rhode Island reported only one violation, but it also has the fewest community water systems, with only 83. Texas, with the most community water systems at 4,574, reported 161 violations. California with 3,283 community systems, reported 177.
While the national compliance average was 91 percent, compliance varied dramatically among the various EPA regions. Region 3 had the highest compliance rate, with 98 percent, followed by Region 9 at 97 percent. Region 1 had the worst compliance rate, at 65 percent. That was well below the second worst, Region 2, with 77 percent.
Of the health-based violations in 2001, 3,241 systems reported violations of MCLs and 1,572 violated treatment technique guidelines. The vast majority of the violations were reported by very small and small systems. That's not terribly surprising since there are a lot more small systems than large.
EPA's goal of 95 percent compliance is contrasted with the baseline of only 83 percent compliance set in 1994. While moving up to 91 percent is a nice jump, the industry seems to be stuck. That's too bad. It seems like 95 percent is an achievable goal.
If I was a newspaper journalist, I might be tempted to point out that nearly 24 million people received substandard drinking water in 2001. I would probably write a big, bold headline and put it at the top of the page. It wouldn't matter that many of those reported "violations" have more to do with paperwork than the quality of water. When you're talking about something we all must have to live, a 9 percent failure rate isn't good enough.
