Presidential Administration and the Environment: Executive Leadership in the Age of Gridlock by David M. Shafie

Author:David M. Shafie [Shafie, David M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Leadership, Public Affairs & Administration, Natural Resources, Political Science, Political Process, Nature, Environmental Policy, General
ISBN: 9781136240515
Google: doJiAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 20309579
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Microbial Contaminants and Disinfection by-Products

The EPA’s Office of Water began a negotiated rulemaking in 1992 to set standards for previously unregulated pathogens in drinking water systems. At the time, the agency estimated that microbial contamination was the cause of 79 percent of maximum contaminant level (MCL) violations. A 1989 lawsuit by an Oregon group, the Bull Run Coalition, took the agency to task for missing the statutory deadlines of the SDWA Amendments. The EPA in turn invoked the Negotiated Rulemaking Act of 1990 and began the process of collaborating with stakeholders to develop standards for microbial contaminants. Negotiations were held with representatives from regulated industries, including water utilities, manufacturers of chemicals used for water treatment, environmentalists, and public health groups. The negotiated rulemaking was an attempt to set standards that would be acceptable to the municipalities and to the other interested parties who were represented at the table.

Shortly after negotiations stalled in 1993, the city of Milwaukee experienced the outbreak of cryptosporidium in its water supply that killed over a hundred people and made thousands of others sick. Annually, cryptosporidium is responsible for an estimated 573,000 illnesses, and the high concentration of victims and large death toll raised the profile of this pathogen considerably at a time when the agency began serious discussions about revising the standards.65 Clinton invoked the Milwaukee tragedy, which occurred within weeks of his inauguration, when he proposed to update and strengthen the SDWA later that year. However, the drinking water bill became a casualty of Congressional gridlock and was abandoned before the 1994 election, along with proposed amendments to the CWA. However, the cryptosporidium deaths brought the parties back to the table, and the EPA was able to promulgate a Stage 1 enhanced surface treatment rule in 1998 that applied to community water systems serving over ten thousand residential units, which took effect in 2002. The Stage 2 rule, which applies nationwide to community water systems serving at least twenty-five residents, appeared in 2005.

The pressure to eliminate microbial contaminants raised the risk of another public health problem. Several of the eighty-three contaminants Congress identified in the 1986 SDWA Amendments were waterborne pathogens that were usually controlled by the widespread use of chemical disinfectants. Except for a chlorine standard issued in 1979, the EPA did little to control the health risks from chemical disinfectants and disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water because the risk of drinking untreated water was significantly greater. The EPA faced a dilemma because the SDWA required the agency to set maximum contaminant level goals (MCLGs) for any contaminant that may have an adverse effect on human health and is known to be present in public water supplies, including DBPs such as chloroform, which were suspected carcinogens. Finally, when the EPA began the negotiated rulemaking for the related problem of microbial contamination in 1992, the agency decided to set MCLGs for by-products of chemical disinfectants, such as chlorine, that posed significant health risks. The rule-makings for microbes and DBPs were undertaken simultaneously so

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