Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Safe Drinking Water Act
When we get the opportunity to travel the world, one of the first things we
learn to ask is whether or not the water is safe to drink. Unfortunately, in most
of the places in the world, the answer is “no.” As much as 80% of all sickness
in the world is attributable to inadequate water or sanitation (Masters, 1991).
The American ecologist William C. Clark probably summed it up best: “If
you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have
done, in one fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for improving
human health by improving environmental quality.” It has been estimated
that three-fourths of the population in Asia, Africa, and Latin America lack a
safe supply of water for drinking, washing, and sanitation (Morrison, 1983).
Money, technology, education, and attention to the problem are essential for
improving these statistics and to solving the problem that this West African
proverb succinctly states: “Filthy water cannot be washed.”
Left alone, Nature provides for us. Left alone, Nature feeds us. Left alone,
Nature refreshes and sustains us with untainted air. Left alone, Nature pro-
vides and cleans the water we need to ingest to survive. As Elliot A. Norse
put it, “In every glass of water we drink, some of the water has already
passed through fishes, trees, bacteria, worms in the soil, and many other
organisms, including people. … Living systems cleanse water and make it
fit, among other things, for human consumption” (Hoage, 1985). Left alone,
Nature performs at a level of efficiency and perfection we cannot imagine.
The problem, of course, is that our human populations have grown too large
to allow Nature to be left alone.
Our egos allow us to think that humans are the real reason Nature exists
at all. In our eyes, our infinite need for water is why Nature works its hydro-
logic cycle—to provide the constant supply of drinking water we need to
sustain life—but the hydrologic cycle itself is unstoppable, human activity
or not. Bangs and Kallen (1985) summed it up best: “Of all our planet's activi-
ties—geological movements, the reproduction and decay of biota, and even
the disruptive propensities of certain species (elephants and humans come
to mind)—no force is greater than the hydrologic cycle.”
Nature, through the hydrologic cycle, provides us with an apparently
endless supply of water; however, developing and maintaining an adequate
supply of safe drinking water requires the coordinated efforts of scientists,
technologists, engineers, planners, water plant operators, and regulatory
officials. In this section, we concentrate on the regulations that have been
put into place in the United States to protect our water supplies and ensure
that they are safe, fresh, and palatable.
Legislation to protect drinking water quality in the United States dates back
to the Public Health Service Act of 1912. With time, the Act evolved, but not
until passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in 1974 (amended 1986,
