CAPE, JACKSON WATER SAFE, SAY OFFICIALS

The water is safe to drink, at least in Cape Girardeau and Jackson, say officials of the water treatment systems in each city.

There is no cause for public alarm over an environmental group's report that one in five Americans drinks water that isn't adequately treated for toxic chemicals, bacteria, parasites and other pollutants. The officials said the drinking water in both cities meets regulatory standards.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, in a report titled "Think Before You Drink," said its examination of nationwide compliance with federal drinking water standards shows that almost 50 million people are drinking improperly treated water.

But statistics can be misleading, says Tom Taggart, water utility manager for Alliance Water Resources, which manages Cape Girardeau's water system. "They are trying to say that one of five is going to get sick, but that is not the case."

Most of the problems, he said, are primarily technical violations involving small, privately owned water systems serving subdivisions as small as eight to 10 homes. "I think we need to stress that it doesn't apply within large municipal systems for the most part," he said.

Said Taggart, "We are in compliance, and we monitor pretty heavily to ensure that."

He said the Cape Girardeau water system hasn't had a single violation since at least June 1992, when the city took over the water system from Union Electric Co.

Cape Girardeau gets its water from the Mississippi River and wells. Jackson's water comes from five wells.

Mark Brown, director of Jackson's utilities and public works, said the city's drinking water system is a quality operation. "We constantly test and monitor the water that goes out of our system," said Brown.

The city and state-approved labs test the water. Brown said numerous reports must be filed with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which administers federal drinking-water regulations in the state. "The quality control is unbelievable," he said.

Brown, who has been on the job for seven months, said the city had a contamination problem in February as a result of a fuel-oil tank leak at the treatment plant. He said the problem was reported to the DNR and corrected quickly.

Congress has grappled for months with legislation that would rewrite the federal drinking water law. The environmental group thinks more should be done to ensure safe drinking water.

"There is no reason why any American should drink contaminated water," Erik Olson, a lawyer for the environmental group, said in releasing the report Wednesday in Washington. "We know how to make water safe and we know how to do it cheaply."

Carol Browner, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the Clinton administration wants Congress to give the agency more authority. "We want to make sure that where there is a violation that we can move expeditiously with an enforcement action," she said. "Right now the current law is very bureaucratic. There are many hoops we have to jump through. We think that should be changed."

Researchers for the environmental group said that, using EPA data, they documented 223,042 violations of federal drinking water standards occurring during 1992 and 1993. They said that included 26,275 cases where water was found to be more contaminated than health standards allow.

But Brown said many of the problems are technical reporting violations and don't reflect actual water quality. EPA, as well as municipal and state officials nationwide, have acknowledged that there are tens of thousands of drinking water violations, but they contend most of them are lapses in record keeping and monitoring.

"I am a big believer in environmental groups," said Brown, "but I also think sometimes their statements go a little bit overboard.

"It's funny: People read these things and they run out and buy bottled water." But Brown said the bottled-water industry doesn't have to meet all the regulatory standards that water systems do.

The Natural Resources Defense Council report said water supplies that served as many as 49.8 million Americans in 1993-94 had higher levels of contamination than allowed by law. The group also said water quality is deteriorating. In 1992-93, it said, 36.4 million Americans drank water that didn't meet federal standards, up from 28.8 million the previous year.

In many cases the water supply systems "violated EPA's treatment technique requirements" that are aimed at protecting against parasites, bacteria and toxic pollutants, the report said.

But the group said only a small percentage of violators are ever subject to enforcement action.

While there are more than 100,000 drinking water violations of all kinds annually, the total number of federal enforcement actions dropped from a high of 3,225 in fiscal 1991 to 2,253 in fiscal 1993, the report said.

The Associated Press provided some information for this story.