Testimony of Robert Moore, General Manager, Marshall County Water Corporation on behalf of the Oklahoma Rural Water Association and the National Rural Water Association before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Excerpts:

Page 6: Currently, there are numerous communities in violation of various federal standards for naturally occurring elements in groundwater where the violation is of no public health consequence relative to the standard. Nobody thinks it would be good public health policy to force these families to face extreme financial burden for less than a one part per billion difference of, for example, naturally occurring fluoride in their water.

ATTACHMENT E:

De Minimis Violations and EPA Enforcement Policy: The agency is implementing a new approach for enforcement targeting under the SDWA for public water systems. According to EPA, “The new approach includes a revised Enforcement Response Policy (ERP) and new Enforcement Targeting Tool (ETT), designed to identify public water systems with violations that rise to a level of significant noncompliance by focusing on those systems with health-based violations and those that show a history of violations  across multiple rules… This system-based approach uses a tool that enables the prioritization of public water systems by assigning each violation a ‘weight’ or number of points based on the assigned threat to public health. Points for each violation at a water system are added together to provide a total score for that water system. Water systems whose scores exceed 11 are considered a priority system for enforcement.” A simple analysis of some of the “worst” violators shows no correlation to severity of violation and public health threats.  For example, Virginia’s ETT database lists small communities with some of the highest or worst ETT scores in the country:

We urge the agency to modify its enforcement policy to better correlate for threats to public health, target technical assistance, acknowledge the limitation of funding for disadvantaged communities, and consider de minimis risks to public health. One of the “worst” violators of the SDWA (i.e. highest ETT score) is Rescue Waterworks in Virginia whose water has less than one-half a part per million of fluoride, a naturally occurring  element in groundwater, above the MCL. Enforcement is not the appropriate approach to small communities in non -compliance that simply don’t have the resources to afford compliance and have a violation of questionable health concerns. None of the non-compliance is a result of disregard for the rules; it is always a result of lack of resources. This can be especially acute in economically disadvantaged communities, when compliance is very costly, or when the violation is not actually related to public health. Most all SDWA violations that EPA identifies as “health based” are for naturally occurring substances, for total coliform which EPA no longer considers a violation or health threat, or a result of disinfecting the water. For fiscal year 2014, EPA lists 9, 906 total health based violations: 2,648 violations are for total coliform (TCR); 1,176 violations are for the arsenic rule, 297 of which are for an exceedance equal to or less than 2 parts per billion (PPB); 232 violations are for the  fluoride rule, 221 of which are for an exceedance equal to or less than 2 parts per million ( PPM ); 331 violations are for the gross alph standard, 204 of which are for an exceedance equal to or less than 10 pCi/L; 428 violations are for radium 226/228, 206 of which are for an exceedance equal to or less than 2 pCi/L; 262 violations are for the uranium standard, 58 of which are for an exceedance equal to or less than 10 picocuries per Liter (pCi/L); and 2,135 violations are for disinfection by-products standards, many of which are only slightly above the MCLs. Any modification in enforcement policy should include a workable variance policy….

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