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Environmental News
Contact: Martin Kessler(913) 551-7236
kessler.martin @epa.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 15, 2004
EPA CELEBRATES SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY AND IOWA'S PROTECTION OF PUBLIC HEALTH
EPA Region 7 will celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Safe Drinking
Water Act on December 16, and salutes the Iowans who work hard everyday
to ensure that their water is safe to drink.
“By working with our communities, we can all help protect public
health by preventing pollution in the rivers, lakes, streams, and underground
aquifers that are the sources of our drinking water,” said Region
7 Administrator Jim Gulliford.
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), signed into law Dec. 16, 1974 and strengthened by amendments in 1986 and 1996, protects human health by regulating the nation’s public drinking water supply. The responsibility for ensuring safe drinking water is divided among EPA, states, tribes, water systems, and the public. Nearly all states and territories have received primacy for the drinking water program.
The Iowa drinking water program has 2,003 public water systems serving over 2.5 million people. Although the state has three large urban systems, Iowa is largely covered by small systems where more than 1,400 of the public water supplies serve fewer than 500 people.
In 2003, 92 percent of Iowa’s systems were in compliance with all health-based standards. Iowa has used federal funding to establish a low-interest loan program to finance improvements for local drinking water systems.
The SDWA requires EPA to set standards on drinking water contaminants that public water systems are required to meet, up from about 10 standards in the 1970s to more than 90 today. Compliance with standards among the nation’s more than 53,000 public water systems is improving nationally even as EPA adopts more standards.
The United States has one of the safest drinking water supplies in the world at an average cost of only 5 gallons for a penny. Americans drink an average of one billion glasses of tap water each day.
The percentage of Americans receiving safe drinking water that meets health standards has risen significantly in the last 30 years. And this progress can continue with the public’s help. EPA encourages local governments, business and citizens to learn more about the sources and treatment of their drinking water by reading their water utility’s annual water quality report, and to take actions to help protect it.
