EPA May Weaken Rule on Water Quality

General Manager George Hanson's Chesapeake Water Association in Lusby, Md., serves 4,000 town residents with four wells. Three of them meet the new arsenic standard, but one well has 14 parts per billion in its water. He estimated that cleaning it up would cost between $1 million and $4 million.

"It's some of the most beautiful water I've ever seen. The arsenic is the only thing that fouls the entire system," Hanson said, adding that he and other community water suppliers are hoping the new EPA proposal will offer them a way out. "They're waiting for someone to help them."

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, complying with federal drinking water standards is not supposed to cost water systems more than 2.5 percent of the median U.S. household income, which in 2004 was $44,684, per household served. That means meeting these standards should not cost more than $1,117 per household.

Under EPA's proposal, drinking water compliance could not cost more than $335 per household.

Several public officials and environmental experts said they were just starting to review the administration's plan, but some said they worry that it could lead to broad exemptions from the current federal contaminant standards cities and larger towns must also meet. Besides arsenic, other water contaminants including radon and lead pose a health threat in some communities.

James Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, said he and others are concerned that the less stringent standard will "become the rule, rather than the exception" if larger communities press for similar relief.

Avner Vengosh, a geochemistry and hydrology professor at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, said he was surprised by the administration's proposal because North Carolina officials are trying to keep arsenic levels as low as 2 parts per billion.

"It's a bit ironic you have this loosening in the EPA standard when local authorities are making it more stringent," Vengosh said, adding that many rural residents "have no clue what they have in the water."

National Rural Water Association analyst Mike Keegan, who backs the administration's proposal, said the current rule is based on what contaminant levels are economically and technically feasible, rather than what is essential to preserve public health.

The administration may face a fight on Capitol Hill over the proposal. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who helped write the 1996 law, said EPA's proposal, "if finalized, would allow weakened drinking water standards, not just in rural areas, but in the majority of drinking water systems in the United States."