TOXIC CHEMICALS AND DRINKING WATER

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In issue 79 of MOTHER, we outlined some of the attacks on the Clean Water Act that are being supported by the current administration. Continuing public support for strong antipollution regulations is extremely important, and additional pressure will have to be exerted to bring about the controls that are already called for by the law.

THE SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT. The SDWA is the regulation that directs the EPA to determine maximum contaminant levels (MCL). Thus far, MCL's have been established for only ten inorganic and six organic toxic chemicals. (To put these numbers in perspective, consider that of the 63,000 chemicals now used commercially, over 700 potentially dangerous ones have already been identified in public water supplies.)

Two very important provisions of the SDWA are its requirement for public notification of standard violations, and its guarantee of the right of private citizens to bring suit against any person alleged to be in violation of its regulations. But the aspect of the SDWA most successfully used by citizen action groups is the "sole source aquifer" provision. In Section 1424(e) of that act, you see, citizens are given the right to petition the EPA to have their underground reservoir designated as a sole-source aquifer. If a groundwater supply can be shown to be the only available source of drinking water for a significant population, and if contamination of it would present a significant hazard to public health, federal funds can be withheld from any project that might threaten that supply.

To date, eight sole-source aquifer petitions have been granted by the EPA, and approximately 25 are pending. All eight designations have resulted from the activities of wellorganized citizen groups backed by scientific data. In the next issue of MOTHER, we'll discuss the specific cases of a few of the successful petitioners.

The SDWA also includes stipulations to protect underground water sources from injection wells used to dispose of hazardous waste. Though these regulations have been successfully applied, brine injection wells used in oil production are specifically excluded from the SDWA's jurisdiction.

RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND RECOVERY AC T: The RCRA was intended to give the EPA control of hazardous waste disposal in landfills, and specifically relates to the leaching of toxic wastes into ground water. Though the bill was passed in 1976, the RCRA is only now beginning to be put to use ... simply because monitoring toxic substance movement into ground water is so technically difficult and expensive. In short, an EPA without a substantial budget (the condition it's in today) can do little to implement the RCRA.

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