A Water Utility's Viewpoint on Recent Federal Drinking Water Regulations

Proceedings of the 1997 Georgia Water Resources Conference, March 20-22, 1997, Athens, Georgia.During 1996 two major federal drinking water regulations were produced. The Information Collection Rule (ICR) was issued in May and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments of 1996 were signed into law in August, 1996. This paper reviews one utility's viewpoint of these regulations and the potential impact that they may have on the drinking water community. The ICR will provide the data base for subsequent regulations to address disinfectants and disinfection byproducts and microbial contaminants including Giardia and Cryptosporidium. The intent of this rule is excellent and most of the data will serve the drinking water community well in developing scientifically valid regulations to address these contaminants. However, many scientists and engineers believe that the methodologies for sampling and identifying Cryptosporidium and Giardia are inadequate to provide meaningful data on which to base decisions about future regulations. The Safe Drinking Water Amendments address numerous topics. The topics that will be addressed in this paper include the requirement to regulate additional contaminants, public notification, the state revolving loan funds (SRF), the recycling of filter backwash water, operator certification, source water assessment and research.Sponsored and Organized by: U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, The University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThis book was published by the Institute of Ecology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602 with partial funding provided by the U.S. Department of Interior, Geological Survey, through the Georgia Water Research Institutes Authorization Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-397). The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of the University of Georgia or the U.S. Geological Survey or the conference sponsors