When the EPA lowered the arsenic standard for drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 in 2001, there were 3,000 water systems in violation. Today, nearly a thousand still are.
By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue
A decade after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took aggressive action to limit arsenic in American drinking water, the agency, in its latest assessment published in January, reports that nearly 1,000 water systems serving 1.1 million people are still not in compliance. Worst affected are the 914 small systems that can not find the funds to meet the arsenic standard. But there are a handful of lobby groups, along with legislation proposed in the Senate, seeking to expand federal funding and low-income assistance programs to insulate America’s poorest residents from the rate shocks that would ensue if small utilities had to fully finance their own upgrades.
The inability of a third of the water systems identified a decade ago as a public health concern to come into compliance illustrates the competition between 21st century modern science, the state of environmental regulation in the U.S., and the nation’s economic outlook. Monitoring equipment can identify a problem, and the government can set a standard—but the nation lacks the foresight and funding to solve the problem so that those who have the most need do not carry the heaviest burden.
Federal money for improvements to drinking water treatment wasn’t available until 1997, with the establishment of the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. Federal funding has typically been directed at sewage treatment. The Water Pollution Control Act of 1956 set federal cost share at 55 percent, providing $US 50 million a year in construction grants for wastewater treatment. In 1972, the Clean Water Act bumped the cost share up to 75 percent, providing $US 18 billion in grants for states to build wastewater facilities.
The cost share, however, fell to 55 percent again in 1981. Then, starting in 1987, grants began to be phased out in favor of state-administered, federally-financed subsidized loans—which, unlike the grants, had to be repaid.
Emblematic of the small system struggle is Andrews, an oil town in West Texas. If residents of Andrews want drinking water that meets the federal standard for arsenic, they cannot get it at home from the public utility. Like much of the Texas Panhandle, the city of 11,000 pumps from wells in the tainted Ogallala Aquifer, where groundwater is laced with naturally occurring arsenic—a known carcinogen—at a concentration of 30 parts per billion, or three times the national legal limit.
To comply with regulations in a way that does not triple or quadruple residential water bills, Andrews officials are beginning a pilot project to install purification devices under the sink in every city home. Forty units are currently being tested in the trial, which runs through April 2012. If it proves successful, the state drinking water regulator will consider authorizing a full deployment. It would be one of the first “point-of-use” technologies approved in Texas as a means for complying with federal drinking water standards.
Until then, however, City Hall is the only place in the city to get water that meets arsenic standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Three taps jut from the north side of the building, where they can be monitored by the water department offices. One tap is for cleaning containers; the other two are fitted with the purification devices that remove arsenic and fluoride, another contaminant in the Ogallala water source that exceeds federal limits.
Bert Lopez, assistant director of water and wastewater in Andrews, told Circle of Blue that the city supplies 4,500 to 5,500 liters (1,200 to 1,500 gallons) of water per day from these taps to residents who arrive with their own containers. Some come with water bottles, others with 19-liter (five-gallon) jugs. The city, Lopez said, does not track how many people use the arsenic-free source. But, assuming the average person drinks about two liters (half a gallon) or less per day, it is possible that a third to a half of the city’s residents are opting for the public tap, instead of sipping the piped water the city has always used.
“We can go back to well measurements from the 1980s,” said Lopez, who has worked for the city for more than 20 years, “and the arsenic levels have been the same. The standard just got lower. Arsenic has been in the water forever.”
The arsenic ruling, says Ben Grumbles, has raised philosophical questions about regulating drinking water that have yet to be satisfactorily answered. Grumbles, an EPA assistant administrator for water from 2003 to 2008, told Circle of Blue that the ideological battlefield is bounded by two concerns: How clean is clean? And how costly is costly?
A Decade Later: Systems Not In Compliance
When the EPA issued its arsenic rule in 2001 at the midnight hour of the Clinton Administration, it forced thousands of public water systems to change how they supplied water. The EPA estimated that 3,000 systems serving 11 million people would be out of compliance. In addition, the rule affected 1,100 non-community water systems—places like churches, nursing homes, and factories.
Christie Todd Whitman, the head of the EPA at the beginning of the Bush Administration, said she would review the new arsenic standard, which was being lowered from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10. Following a September 2001 report from the National Research Council which concluded that the EPA had underestimated the health risk at 10 ppb, Whitman upheld the previous administration’s decision in October 2001, and the rule went into effect the next year.
Public water systems were given until 2006 to meet the new limit, but they could apply for nine years worth of “compliance extensions” that would give them until 2015 to incorporate new technology into their treatment programs.
The ruling had the greatest effect in the upper Midwest, Southwest, and Northeast, regions where naturally contaminated groundwater is a main supply source. For large systems, this meant installing filtration technology in their treatment plants. Many opted for a process called ion exchange, which swaps benign molecules for arsenic ions as they pass through resin-coated filters. For some small systems, though, that solution would be like adding an airbag to a car without a chassis or wheels—they didn’t have the basic treatment plant to begin with.
– Ben Grumbles
Asst. Administrator for Water
EPA (2003-2008)
“This was perhaps the first time many of these systems had to build infrastructure to come into compliance with federal regulations,” said Jim Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, a professional group for water bureaucrats. “Many are groundwater systems, which typically don’t need as much treatment.”
In 2010, there were 934 documented violators, most of which were small, rural systems serving fewer than 10,000 people—many serving only a couple hundred. Thus, lacking a large customer base, the smaller systems have found it financially difficult to meet standards while keeping water affordable.
The city of Andrews, Texas, is one of those systems.
In Andrews, the water department adds chlorine as a disinfectant, but otherwise the water is distributed straight from the well field. Because of the high cost of a treatment plant—$US11 million to build and up to $US 5 million per year to operate and maintain, according to city water official Lopez—it has been ruled out as a compliance option.
The city is now operating under something called a bilateral compliance agreement, a deal negotiated with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the state drinking water regulator. For the Safe Drinking Water Act, all U.S. states except for Wyoming have ‘primacy,’ which means they are in charge of monitoring and enforcement. These results are then reported to the EPA, which is the overseeing body. TCEQ appealed to the EPA for less stringent enforcement standards, and the EPA approved the approach in 2006.
Texas is one of the few states to relax its enforcement of the arsenic rule in order to give small communities more leeway until cheaper treatment options are available. The TCEQ has signed compliance agreements for arsenic with 114 public water systems in the state. These agreements allow towns to use bottled water or community taps—like the ones at City Hall in Andrews—to provide arsenic-free water.
But these solutions are not meant to be permanent. Pending the results of its pilot project, Andrews officials have decided in favor of in-home treatment, a program that will cost $US 3 million in capital expenditures and $US 500,000 per year for operations, said Lopez.
Defining ‘Affordable’
The financial burdens of the arsenic rule have been controversial from the beginning. Under the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, the EPA has the authority to grant affordability variances to small systems. Variances allow a utility to use cheaper treatment technology that improves water quality, but not to the point where it meets the federal standard. This determination comes with a caveat: a variance can be granted only if it does not pose an “unreasonable risk to health.”
– Jim Taft
Executive Director
Association of State Drinking Water Administrators
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[...] is one of only eight states in which none of our water treatment systems violate the federal arsenic standards for [...]
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I live in Colorado where according to the graphic above Arsenic is not a big concern. However, due to the surronding farms there are many contaminants that threaten our water supply. Instead of buying bottled water which up to 40% of it is just tap water anyway and has an untold effect on the environment. For example Americans drink and discard a half a billion water bottles each week, enough to circle the Earth 5 times!! I decided that the best way to protect me and my family would be to use a water filter. After trying several different brands I finally landed on New Wave Enviro’s Premium 10 Stage Drinking Water Filter. The two stages of Carbon will take out the Arsenic, herbicides, pesticides, chlorine, Voc’s, trihalomethanes etc. It is bacteriostat, has a cation exchange layer, and also calcite which controls the pH of the water. I like it because it is the most complete filter with out going with an RO which strips everything out of the water including the good minerals.
While any filter is better than no filter and definitely better than bottled water. I encourage everyone to check this one out: http://www.newwaveenviro.com/premium-10-stage-water-filter-p-86.html
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Great article! FYI it’s not that difficult to remove arsenic form drinking water, we’ve done it for companies, cities and a school, using media, membranes and filtration technologies.
You can view a presentation, and links to a few of our case studies on this page
http://www.water.siemens.com/en/applications/drinking_water_treatment/arsenic-removal/Pages/default.aspx
[...] out to provide information on global water issues. It’s recent summary on arsenic (click here) is an interesting read, but frames the issue with a particular point of view as public relations [...]
Communities should not still be fighting to have clean drinking water. Each citizen should familiarize themselves with water regulations to make sure their are safe.
I believe the 2.5% MHI number is for water AND wastewater bills.
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