Millions of Americans have no idea how safe their drinking water is

Since 1974, the SDWA has given the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to mandate statewide water quality testing, set limits for hazardous substances, and take action when standards aren’t met. But EPA regulates only about 100 contaminants, a list covering common agricultural chemicals, industrial wastes, sewage system detergents, and microorganisms. That’s a good start, but there are thousands of substances in our water that aren’t monitored. EPA has added only one new substance to the list is the past two decades—perchlorate, an oxidizing agent used in rocket fuel, fireworks, and matches. (But since it hasn’t actually introduced a standard for acceptable levels, perchlorate is still effectively unregulated). Meanwhile, other commonly found contaminants—from Telfon-derived PFOA to algal toxins—freely pass out of the tap. 

But there are reasons to believe that even the chemicals we do monitor are widely underreported. Though the NRDC report found more than 12,000 health-based violations in 2015, it found even more violations related to compliance and transparency: nearly 70,000 instances of failing to test water properly, or failing to report contamination altogether. According to the report, this means as many as 50 million Americans, almost a sixth of the population, simply don’t know whether their water is safe: a risk was never communicated, or officials just weren’t watching. Meanwhile, EPA—overtaxed and underfunded—took formal action in only 13.1 percent of these cases.  

When it comes to dubious water safety, 50 million Americans is a scary number. But even this estimate is probably too low.

First, the report suggests that there’s likely a number of “safe” false positives. Because many pesticides and chemicals are screened for on only a quarterly basis, or even less often, it’s easy to miss acute downturns in water quality. That’s a risk in agricultural regions, where spraying happens seasonally, and where contaminant levels can easily increase fourfold depending on the time of year.

Then, the vast majority of violations—or what should be violations—are simply never tracked, a fact EPA readily acknowledges. In 2004, an EPA audit found that only 65 percent of health-related violations and only 23 percent of monitoring violations were being properly reported. More recently, the agency acknowledged that “audits and assessments have shown that violation data are substantially incomplete.” In some places, officials may be obfuscating or outright falsfying data to spare themselves headaches, financial cost, or public shame. In others, especially in towns and cities where the population has plummeted, they may simply be too cash-strapped to comply. Whatever the reason, the picture remains mostly incomplete. According to NRDC, a ten-year-old EPA inspector general’s report found that up to 30 percent of the data supplied by audited states was incomplete, problematic, or potentially fake.

“Our paradigm was that you get the water you can afford. And that worked—when you had stable, growing city populations,” Edwards says. “But when you have cities like Flint, Michigan that lost 60 percent of its population, or Ranger, Texas which lost 90 percent of its population, the people left behind cannot afford to pay to maintain the infrastructure they have. Much less, upgrade it to the point they can meet federal law.”

Despite all this, Edwards, who has worked on water quality issues for more than a decade, is feeling optimistic. He sees media scrutiny as a positive sign: not just the coverage of Flint, but a recent USA Today series on the widespread lead contamination of public drinking water, or a recent Daily Show episode spotlighting the plight of Ranger, Texas. 

Water crosses state lines and regional boundaries, flowing east to west and north to south. We all need it to survive. If there’s one national issue that receives bipartisan support, shouldn’t it be this?

“For eight years, it was very lonely. But I really feel a momentum here that’s going to force change,” Edwards says. “There’s something about this that makes everyone mad. It affects their most vulnerable, elderly, and youngest children, and if we can’t support a basic level of civilization, what kind of society have we become? We’re not asking for anything new. We’re asking that we maintain the civilization that we once had and took for granted.”