The emergency water supplies of communities in many parts of the country may be at risk of contamination due to weak government oversight.
A new report from the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency highlights the potential danger in cities drawing on emergency and supplementary water supplies, which serve roughly 58 million Americans in an estimated 6,700 water systems.
The problem, the report says, is that neither state nor federal officials have been given specific responsibility for overseeing the quality of emergency supplies, and there is no established rule clarifying the circumstances in which communities should tap the supplies.
Instead, these decisions are left to local officials, and water quality safety is based largely on trust, rather than strict oversight.
The case of Crestwood, Ill., which was the subject of a Chicago Tribune account that sparked the inspector general’s investigation, illustrates the potential hazards. Local officials spent more than 20 years supplementing city’s water supply with water from tainted wells, evidently to save cash. The state body charged with regulating the town’s water neglected to test the supply sufficiently, wrongly believing in the word of local authorities. Various local officials in Crestwood now face federal investigations in connection with the water problems.
The report recommended that the EPA develop controls to improve oversight and minimize the risks with the emergency supplies.
