LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: IS OUR WATER SAFE?

To the Editor:

Is our water safe? Should Federal laws protect us from poisoned water? These are the questions that we should ask ourselves as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives decide whether to maintain, strengthen or weaken national clean water laws. Most folks expect that turning the kitchen faucet should not place them at risk. But sometimes it does. Important laws regulating water quality are up for consideration and renewal this year; we should urge that they be maintained and strengthened, not weakened.

Unsafe water reaches us as a consequence of a two-step sequence. First, toxic or disease-causing substances enter our lakes and rivers. Second, municipal water purification processes fail to remove them.

Sources of hazardous material entering lakes and rivers are of two kinds. So-called 'point sources' are industrial or urban wastes that come from specific drains and pipes. 'Non-point' sources come from general run-off flowing from the land surface into lakes and rivers. This may contain hazardous materials resulting from agricultural or forestry activities.

While point sources CAN be readily controlled if limits are legislated and regulated, non-point sources are harder to deal with. However, the chemicals (e.g. pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers) and organic wastes (e.g. fecal matter) from nonpoint sources can be as hazardous as unregulated industrial waste. The Clean Water Act (1972, amended 1977) and the 1987 Water Quality Act are designed to regulate and protect our water resources.

Potential drinking water provided through public facilities is generally filtered, treated with chlorine to eliminate (some but not all) disease organisms, and passed through charcoal to remove some (but not all) of the chemicals. The purification process is controlled federally by the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974).

If we wish to improve drinking water quality, these laws need to be maintained. Very few sewage treatment plants currently remove hazardous chemicals from waste water they treat, thus permitting pollution of our water resources. Non-point sources are almost completely unregulated and have been implicated in many incidents such as the deaths and sickness in Milwaukee last year when 800,000 residents had to avoid water from a municipal purification plant due to disease contamination.

Recently 28,000 miles of rivers and 3.6 million acres of lakes were revealed to contain harmful levels of toxic substances. Water quality in many Missouri rivers continues to deteriorate.

So far, the Environmental Protection Agency has not yet even established limits for most of the 700 potential pollutants in municipal drinking water. Furthermore, only 2% of substantiated violations, effecting 40 million people, are subject to enforcement action and fines.

Both our water resources and our purification processes deserve protection and improvement. But, some federal legislators are attempting to weaken laws by reducing funds for sewage treatment, reducing the regulation of toxic chemicals, and limiting protection for wetlands that naturally store and purify our water resources. Some legislators would also like to reduce controls on smaller public utilities providing purified water, and eliminate or reduce standards for regulating carcinogens in our water.

Do we have a right to clean lakes and rivers, and pure drinking water? The common-sense answer is "Yes!" Should we regulate the release of hazardous substances into our lakes and rivers, and control the purification process at public utilities so that drinking water quality can be maintained and improved? Again, the common-sense answer is "Yes!"

We should not allow our representatives to weaken laws that protect either the quality of our water resources or the quality of our drinking water. By supporting the Private Property Owner's Bill of Rights and its direct attack on the Clean Water Act, Congressman Bill Emerson stands squarely opposed to water quality.

I urge area residents to contact their representatives in Washington to encourage strong support for all legislation that would maintain or strengthen laws dealing with the important public health issue of water quality.

ALAN R.P. JOURNET

Conservation Chair

Trail of Tears Group

Sierra Club