Drinking Water Right-to-Know: New Tools and Opportunities

Prepared by: Lynn Thorp, Clean Water Fund/Clean Water Action, Washington, D.C. and
Marguerite Young, Clean Water Fund/Clean Water Action, San Francisco, CA

October, 2001

 

When residents of Zelienople PA received their first ever drinking water Right to Know Report from their water company in late 2000, they found high nitrate levels in their drinking water.  For many, this confirmed that their concern about the nearby AK Steel plant and its nitrate pollution had been well founded.  They already knew from 1997 Toxics Release Inventory Data that AK Steel’s nitrate emissions into a local stream represented 78% of toxic releases into the state’s surface waters.  Now they had confirmation that the problem had made its way into their finished drinking water.  Residents’ continued campaign for effective action to limit or eliminate AK Steel’s pollution is bolstered by both kinds of publicly available information; their case demonstrates that drinking water Right-to-Know, like the TRI, can be an effective tool for public education and advocacy. 

 

For many years, Clean Water Action and the Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water have worked from the premise that drinking water issues present powerful new outreach and organizing opportunities, as well as policy options for preventing pollution and protecting public health.  Key to success is the ability to provide drinking water consumers with timely and accurate information about the quality of their drinking water and potential threats to its safety.Think we should add something by way of context here about what drinking water right to know means and what our goals are, then how various things like SDWA have helped/hindered achieving. Perhaps leading with the Zeniople story?

In 1996, after a hard fought lobbying effort by the environmental, consumer and public health communities, amendments were added to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) providing three important new right-to-know policy tools:

 

“Consumer Confidence” or “Drinking Water Right-to-Know (RTK) ” Reports: requiring mMost water companies are required to produce these Reports annually. The Reports should describe: the source of the drinking water; contaminants that have been found in tap water; the potential health effects of contaminants which violated drinking water standards; the sources of contamination (general or specific) and other important information. The first Reports, containing 1998 information, were distributed in October, 1999; Reports have been due annually by July 1 since then.  The Reports are to be widely distributed, though requirements vary by the size of the population served by the water company.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also considers two other part of the 1996 SDWA amendments to fall into the “right-to-know” category: new

Public Notification: States and water companies are required to comply with updated requirements for when and how water companies have to notify state officials and/or their customers about contamination problems.and the ongoing “source water assessment” process.  “Public notification” refers to requirements for when and how water utili

 

have to notify their consumers of contamination problems.Source water assessments: This prefers to a process that requires states to thoroughly catalog the quality of drinking water sources, list contaminants and their potential sources and gauge vulnerability and susceptibility. The planning for these assessments, which are to be completed by 2003, was designed to include public input and both the plans and the assessments themselves, as they become available, are intended to be widely available to the public. 

 

All three of these tools, which have only begun to be implemented in the last 18 months or so, can provide valuable information for public health and environmental protection.

 

Drinking Water RTK Reports merit specific attention at this conference.  They are unique in that they are widely distributed through general postal patron mailings, in water bills or in some cases door to door. The information is supposed to be presented in a manner that is understandable by a wide number of potential readers.  Some ways in which these Reports can be a valuable tool:

 

·        Information about contaminants detected could alert people – including those vulnerable to being made ill by contamination - and their doctors to a possible cause of illness

·        Information about the presence of contaminants might lead concerned citizens to mobilize to eliminate sources of pollution.

·        “Upstream” and “downstream” activists and consumers in different parts of a watershed might find common ground in protecting a body of water that serves as a drinking water source.  Thus the reports can work to promote pollution prevention.

·        The information in the reports could help water companies work with communities to explain the need for upgrading distribution, filtration or disinfection systems.

 

During 1998-2000, activists concentrated on improvements to the federal rules and guidance for the Reports, on getting improvements in state implementation of the program, on public outreach around the Reports, and on training activists to understand and use the Reports.  Citizen campaigns have already won concrete improvements in Report requirements in several states.  Examples include:

 

·        New Jersey Reports must place the requiredrequires a prominent warning to vulnerable populations in a prominent place in the Report. 

·        Distribution requirements exceed federal standards in New Jersey, California and a number of other states.

·        California’s program improves upon the requirements for informing non-English speakers.  A Spanish translation of the full Report is mandatory, and the recommended “warning phrase” is required in any language for which the population of water consumers is 1% or 1000 people.California requires an advisory about the Reports’ importance to be included in Spanish in all reports. Advisories are also required in other languages if they are the primary language of the lesser of 1,000 or 10% of the population served.   The presence of arsenic at levels below the federal drinking water standard triggers warning language under California provisions won earlier this year.

·        Beginning in 2003 California utilities detecting arsenic in tap water at levels above the public health goal (expected to be 10-20ppt) will have to notify consumers of potential health effects.

 

During 1998-99, over 2000 activists attended state, regional and national drinking water training conferences that included sessions on understanding and using Drinking Water RTK Reports and on getting involved in Source Water Assessments.  These conferences, hosted by Clean Water Fund, Clean Water Action and Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water allies including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Consumer Federation of America, US PIRG and Physicians for Social Responsibility, demonstrated the interest of a broad array of activists in these tools and the enormous potential for using them in existing and new campaigns.

 

In March 2000, the Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water produced “Measuring Up: Grading the First Round of Drinking Water Right-to-Know Reports,” a first-ever snap shot of over 500 Reports from 22 states.  This project helped coalition allies identify positive aspects of the reports, problems and needs for improvement.  Clean Water Fund in California and Pennsylvania and Citizens Campaign for the Environment in New York have conducted follow-up projects.

 

Opportunities

 

Opportunities around drinking water Right-to-Know Reports fall into two categories:

(1) improvement in the content and distribution of the Reports and (2)increased public outreach, and activist training on the availability and utility of the Reports and developing organizing campaigns utilizing CCRs as a tool. The Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water and allies are already working on projects related to many of these opportunities on the federal level and in at least some states, and can provide information to other interested organizations..

 

Potential Improvements in Content and Distribution of Drinking Water RTK Reports

 

 

·        Wider distribution, ( i.e. not just bill payers but consumers, publicity, etc.) and access ( non-
English translations and advisories)

·        Clearer information for vulnerable populations on what the contaminant information means to them

·        Identifying specific polluters

·        Treatment technique, reporting and monitoring violations more consistently reported

·        Information on potential health effects for all contaminants detected above the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (health-based, non-enforceable standard)

 

·        Clarity in presentation of information in reports – some have been difficult to read and understand

 

More translation, outreach to non-English speakers

Outreach/Training/Organizing

 

 

·        Activists working on conservation, pollution prevention, toxics and other issues do not always know that these Reports are available and how useful they can be in confirming contamination issues and mobilizing around them.  We have only begun to tap into the potential offered by the fact that these Reports are sent directly to drinking water consumers directly by their water companies. We can do more to increase the use of these Reports as tools for organizing and affecting policy changes.  The Reports can reinforce campaigns for everything from stricter drinking water regulation to elimination of pollution that leads to drinking water contamination.

 

·        They could be used to identify overall trends around drinking water quality, i.e. is our drinking water getting more or less contaminated over time?

 

·        Public health care providers can be made more aware of the utility of the Reports for identifying possible causes of a variety of health affects.  The information can also help health care providers treating patients most vulnerable to drinking water contaminants, including the frail elderly, infants, and those with suppressed immune systems, i.e. those living with HIV/AIDS or people receiving chemotherapy.

 

·        We can expand our outreach to limited English speaking communities, who often demonstrate an interest in drinking water quality by being more likely to purchase bottled water rather than tap water.

 

Challenges

 

• Utilities may challenge efforts to increase specificity of pollution sources, water source boundaries or expand health effects notification in the wake of concerns about terrorist attacks on water supplies.  These issues were already challenging but may become more so. 

 

• A few model projects suggest that more could be done to make drinking water right-to-know more than an annual affair, for instance by increasing access to real time monitoring data and identifying contaminant hotspots in a utility’s service area.

 

• Sales of bottled water indicate that some drinking water consumers assume that bottled water is of higher quality than treated tap water.  While some companies have included information in labels or in brochures made available to customers if requested, efforts to move federal  “right-to-know” legislation for bottled water have not received much attention.  This could be an important issue for people whose assumptions lead them to pay top dollar for bottled water, and who may not be aware of the weaker regulation of that product.

 

·        The 1996 SDWA Amendments require EPA to develop a National Contaminant Occurrence Database (NCOD), which would compile state drinking water reporting and information from other sources into one on-line format. This would complete a dual information model that we envision for drinking water, i.e. information available directly from one’s water company in the mail, with on-line access to the full drinking water quality picture for one’s state or region. The NCOD is also essential for providing a national picture of overall drinking water quality and emerging threats to drinking water safety. The project is behind schedule due to apparent lack of leadership and funding, as well as technical challenges at the state and federal levels..

 

• Ultimately, we need to create an integrated picture of water quality in a state or region.  Current information is often fragmented and incomplete, with RTK Reports focused on tap water, while other water quality monitoring is focused on bodies of water that often serve as drinking water sources. The potential is great for using drinking water RTK Reports, Source Water Assessments and Clean Water Act programs to create this integrated picture and develop plans for watershed improvement; this approach is being tested by the Clean Water Action Alliance of Massachusetts and Green CAPE on Cape Cod and several other model efforts.

 

• At this conference and beyond, we hope to inform more activist leaders about drinking water Right-To-Know tools and to encourage wider use of these tools in campaigns to protect public health and the environment.

 

 

Resources

 

Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water:  www.safe-drinking-water.org

US EPA: www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.htm

Clean Water Action: www.cleanwateraction.org

Clean Water Fund: www.cleanwaterfund.org

Send comments on this paper to Lynn Thorp or Marguerite Young