Drinking water for the future

Abstract

The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 represents an important step in improving the quality of public water supply in the United States. However, it fails to address two important problems: (1) The 1970 Public Health Service Community Water Supply Survey revealed that small public water supply systems often deliver poor quality water. The Act does not assure that these supplies will now receive appropriate attention; furthermore, the Act does not address the needs of the 50 million people not now served by public water systems; (2) About one-third of our population draws its drinking waters from polluted sources. The decisions to use these low cost sources were made generations ago when consumers could be protected from water-borne infectious disease. A new problem has now arisen--the presence of numerous synthetic organic chemicals of uncertain health consequence, not removed by conventional water treatment. The Act does not address this problem. Regionalization and the integration of water resource and water pollution control authorities are proposed as a reasonable solution to these problems. The development of dual water supply systems in order to conserve scarce pure water sources for human consumption appears to be a feasible way to avoid using polluted waters for drinking. The development of dual supplies would be enhanced by regionalization and integration of water authorities.