Safe Drinking Water Act

I'm glad you brought that point up.

And look, in nineteen seventy, we passed the Clean Water Act, right? And then we passed the Safe Drinking Water Act.

And that was in the seventies.

So here we are today where we have health, continued health-based violations.

Mm-hmm.

We have to-- the state has to implement all the Safe Drinking Water Act regulations, which means we have to make sure water systems are taking the required samples, water systems are doing the required testing, the test data is submitted, that data goes into an EP's database called SDWIS, and, and that way, that's where the transparent- transparency comes in.

Uh, so that's just an aspect of making sure the water system-- the water systems that are out of compliance, our goal is to offer them technical assistance and bring them into compliance.

So we have technical assistance contract with the training partners, Georgia Rural Water Association, Georgia Association of Water Professionals.

Yeah

...

so we have a whole source water protection program that, of course, is required under the Safe Drinking Water Act we gotta run.

So if I can put like in big four or five buckets, you have source water protection going on, uh, in one group.

Um, next.

What federal law regulates public drinking water supplies? And the federal law that, uh, does that is the, uh, Safe Drinking Water Act or the SDWA.

Um, very important to know for your exams 'cause they can or will ask you questions on these regulations and definitely, uh, the Safe Drinking Water Act.

That's like a, um, the anthem for drinking water, uh, drinking water systems.

So, um, and then when was the Safe Drinking Water Act originally passed? And it was passed in nineteen seventy-four.

Mark it down, remember it, get it in your mind, uh, put it on a flashcard, listen to this podcast.

Whatever you have to do, remember that date, nineteen seventy-four.

It's very important, uh, for the, uh, Safe Drinking Water Act passing of that law.

But I, I think it might be helpful just to provide a little bit of background here.

So the Safe Drinking Water Act, it's the main federal statute, so the main law that governs drinking water quality in this country, and it was passed back in the early 1970s, in 1974, and that law authorizes EPA to set limits on contaminants in water supplied by public water systems So those were most Americans are getting their water.

And so these public water systems are responsible for treating as well as testing the water they provide to households and businesses.

They then generally report those results to a state agency that oversees them, and then that state agency reports violations of those limits to EPA.

And thus EPA, the main federal agency that oversees the Safe Drinking Water Act, their main federal compliance database contains mostly information on violations.

It also contains information on the water systems and enforcement.

But what it doesn't contain necessarily are the, like, a comprehensive record of the underlying water pollution readings.

So one bucket is concerned with surface water pollution, pollution that enters into rivers, lakes, and streams, and so you can think of that as our Clean Water Act bucket, and it funds construction and upgrade of municipal wastewater treatment plants.

But as they were laying the tap water infrastructure across the country, different rules and regulations were being imposed.

And so the Safe Water Drinking Act of 1986 removed the ability for there to be used lead pipes underneath the ground.

But we still have 9.2 million miles of lead pipes underneath the ground today.

When they were building the city of Chicago, it was mandatory at the time.

I want to read a list of all the laws she waived, because I think it gives a good impression of things that matter less to these people than building a giant monument to grift and hatred.

The National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Clean Air Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Paleontological Resources Protection Act, the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988, the National Trail System Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Noise Control Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, as amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environment Response Compensation and Liability Act, the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Antiquities Act, the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act, the Eagle Protection Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, Section 438 of the Energy Independence and Security Act, the National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Farmland Policy Protection Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Wild Horse and Burrow Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Otay Mountain Wilderness Act of 1999.

Each of these laws was passed for a reason.

It's not easy in this country to restrain capitalism through the law.

In October 2014, General Motors stopped using water from the Flint River, fearing corrosion in their machines.

By January 2015, Flint was found to be violating the Safe Drinking Water Act.

And starting in February of that year, there were ongoing reports of extremely high levels of lead found in different homes.

This brings us to the day 11 years ago, September 24, 2015, when Mona Hanna-Attisha, an associate professor at Michigan State, published groundbreaking research.

A former Trenton Water Works sample collector has been sentenced to three years in prison for failing to collect water samples and falsifying water quality reports.

38-year-old Cesar Lugo, who pleaded guilty to tampering with public records... and violated the Safe Drinking Water Act, knowingly submitted false water testing results and falsified chain of custody forms in 2023, according to Attorney General Jennifer Davenport.

On multiple occasions, he failed to conduct the required water collections altogether, but still submitted timesheets showing he performed the work.

The news is made possible by Bet365.