Another sign of decline: US drinking water unsafe
Not all drinking water is unsafe, to be sure. But how do you know that your own drinking water is safe? And if you travel, how do you know the drinking water at your destination is safe? Safe fresh water seems to me a basic government obligation, and when the government no longer can provide safe water, it’s a bad sign. Charles Duhigg in the NY Times:
More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.
That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.
Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.
Studies indicate that drinking water contaminants are linked to millions of instances of illness within the United States each year.
In some instances, drinking water violations were one-time events, and probably posed little risk. But for hundreds of other systems, illegal contamination persisted for years, records show.
On Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee will question a high-ranking E.P.A. official about the agency’s enforcement of drinking-water safety laws. The E.P.A. is expected to announce a new policy for how it polices the nation’s 54,700 water systems…
Continue reading. You’ll perhaps recall the discovery that the drinking water in Washington DC had lead levels far, far beyond what is safe from 2001 to 2004. I blogged about it in April. And, of course, the repeated contamination of food, with subsequent recalls. And the refusal to test thoroughly for mad-cow disease (blocked by the beef industry for fear that such tests would find the disease). And, of course, the billions and billions wasted in the War on Drugs, including enforcement, investigation, court cases, prisons, prison staff, and so on and on—with the illegality of drugs preventing many addicts from getting treatment (because they don’t want to go to prison).
The government is gradually becoming unable to fulfill its responsibilities. The drinking water is one sign, the blockage in the Senate is another.
BTW, you just won’t know whether the local water is safe or not:
… An analysis of E.P.A. data shows that Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of every state. In the prosperous town of Ramsey, N.J., for instance, drinking water tests since 2004 have detected illegal concentrations of arsenic, a carcinogen, and the dry cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, which has also been linked to cancer.
In New York state, 205 water systems have broken the law by delivering tap water that contained illegal amounts of bacteria since 2004.
However, almost none of those systems were ever punished. Ramsey was not fined for its water violations, for example, though a Ramsey official said that filtration systems have been installed since then. In New York, only three water systems were penalized for bacteria violations, according to federal data.
The government is failing—though of course in this particular case (the drinking water contamination), the Bush Administration quite deliberately backed away from environmental protection and did not fund or support activities of that sort, which Bush and his cohorts viewed as “anti-business” and not so good an idea as, saying, invading Iraq and starting a war there.
