Reply #8: Here's the bill

[jmowreader]

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:5:./temp/~c109WDUXRa::

It appears to be striking a balance between meeting the federal drinking water standards and being able to afford to do so.

An example is St. Maries, Idaho--the town I referred to in the first post of this subthread. St. Maries has always pulled its drinking water from Mutch Creek, which is 16 miles from the city limits. Mutch Creek is groundwater and its water is piped to St. Maries through a 16-inch aqueduct that's partially terracotta and partially wood. There are two pumping stations on the pipe--one is on the St. Joe River Road, the other at the base of Capitol Hill, where the water tank is. Mutch Creek water is clean enough to drink without treatment. But in the 1980s, some bureaucrat from the EPA decided the town needed to sink a 400-foot cased well and build a treatment facility...and they weren't gonna help. I guess the eight miles of wooden pipe kinda flipped them out.

They couldn't afford it. They couldn't even afford it after Henry Sindt offered to drill the well and run the casing free of charge.

I don't know what caused the EPA to go away, but they finally did. This bill seems to provide a way out.

Besides, the provisions cut off the second you put the 10,001st customer on the system.