RAWSTORY: Bill aims to make national water standards voluntary

[Coexist]

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Bill_aims_to_make_national_water_0616.html

CHICAGO -- Half of the country's water systems are making a potentially hazardous switch, while a bill aims to make national safe drinking water standards voluntary, RAW STORY has learned.

The Small Systems Safe Drinking Water Act makes it voluntary for plumbing companies to comply with national standards. The introduction of the act announces that it's intention is to, "to prevent the enforcement of certain national primary drinking water regulations unless sufficient funding is available or variance technology has been identified."

If your water is tainted with lead, there isn't much you can do about it. The manufacturer probably won't be liable and probably can't be sued.

When plumbing manufactures use pipes containing lead alloys, which are cheaper than most other alloys, the pipes can corrode and react with a new water disinfectant, chloramine. Chloramine reacts with the pipes and lead leaches into household water.

more...

[peacetalksforall]

1. Brought to us by Republicans and how many Democrats? Another

example of why it is so important to save fetuses. Brain damage, dependency, sickness, impotence, and death is the perfect destiny for a successfully born fetus. Then top if off with lack of insurance.

Yes, the United Corporation of Corporations.

Where your congressional leaders work closely with corporations and their lobbyists for corporate interests.

[Coexist]

2. kick - this scares me.

[cosmicdot]

3. S.2161 ??

Small System Safe Drinking Water Act of 2005

S 2161

introduced by James Inhofe (Chair of Committee on Environment and Public Works);
co-sponsored by Pete Domenici; Chuck Hagel; and,
Ben Nelson (whose side is he on again?)

Title: A bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to prevent the enforcement of certain national primary drinking water regulations unless sufficient funding is available or variance technology has been identified.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?F2F036A4D

Latest Major Action: 12/21/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. The ranking minority committee member is Jim Jeffords (I).


109th Congress
Committee Members
James M. Inhofe, Chair
R-Oklahoma

James M. Jeffords, Ranking Member
I-Vermont

John W. Warner,
R-Virginia

Max Baucus,
D-Montana

Christopher S. Bond,
R-Missouri

Joseph I. Lieberman,
D-Connecticut

George V. Voinovich,
R-Ohio

Barbara Boxer,
D-California

Lincoln Chafee,
R-Rhode Island

Thomas R. Carper,
D-Delaware

Lisa Murkowski,
R-Alaska

Hillary Rodham Clinton,
D-New York

John Thune,
R-South Dakota

Frank Lautenberg,
D-New Jersey

Jim DeMint,
R-South Carolina

Barack Obama
D-Illinois

Johnny Isakson
R-Georgia


Guess this will reverse (reform :sarcasm:) improvements made by the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 as amended in 1996


the anti-people progress think tanks haven't missed much have they

[Maestro]

4. disgusting

What is the logic behind this?

[jmowreader]

6. There's actually a good point behind this

When the municipal water supplies of many communities were established, they were either partially or completely built with lead pipe. They either didn't know lead pipe was bad for you, or they couldn't afford anything else. Copper's expensive, iron's expensive, lead is not so bad. Most of these systems predate chemical disinfection of water.

The government later came down and insisted on chlorination of domestic supplies, but they didn't say HOW to chlorinate. The logical way is to install an automatic chlorinator, but they're expensive. In the town where I grew up, a guy from the city drove up to the city water tank and did a chlorine test on the water in the tank. (Yes, we only had one tank for many, many years. Now they have three.) If the PPM was too low, he'd stir up a concoction consisting of swimming pool chlorine granules and water, dump it into the tank, stir it around with a stick or something for a while, then run another test to be sure there was enough chlorine to last three or four days. You could always tell when he'd done it because the water tasted like it came out of a swimming pool for the first 24 hours.

Back to the point: these systems are going to chloramine because the EPA uses coliform in drinking water as a fundraiser. If you disinfect your water with chlorine and your water system's got one tank on it, by the time the water gets to the end of the line it's almost guaranteed to have coliform in it because dissolved chlorine isn't stable--it likes to leave the water. They'll go to a gas station on the edge of town, draw some water out of the restroom sink, test it for coliform then fine the city when they find it above the "maximum allowable level," which isn't very high. Chloramine is far more stable so it keeps the coliform at bay throughout the system.

Now we're in a "damned if you do" situation. The water system is built with lead pipe. They can't afford to replace it with their own money. There isn't enough federal money, thanks to Ronald Reagan and his dim protege Bush the Stupider along with their buddy Grover Norquist, to issue grants to communities to replace the pipe. They also can't afford to keep disinfecting with chlorine because every six months the EPA will come to town and hold a fundraiser. So the chemical that keeps the coliform fines at bay is also responsible for causing lead fines. They can't afford coliform fines, lead fines or new pipes...and the press that can squeeze blood out of a stone hasn't been invented yet.

How I'm reading this, and I may be wrong, is that they're attempting to stop killing small towns with fines for things that they cannot afford to fix.

[Maestro]

7. Okay I see your point

but what to do about water safety then? Are just going to expect the local water company to do everything in its power to keep the water as clean as possible without oversight?

[jmowreader]

8. Here's the bill

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.

[MazeRat7]

11. Thanks for the detailed and reasonable explaination....

I'm sure you noticed that occasionally folks get all wrapped around the axle about the "title" of something without fully understanding the science and engineering behind the problem. I thought it odd at first blush too given only the title, but after reading your post, the bill, and remembering back to some basic college chemistry... it makes sense.

Either that or its a ploy by the "bottled water lobby" to make more money. :rofl:

MZr7

[jmowreader]

5. This is a big concern for old systems, not for new ones

New systems, and new additions to old ones, are all done in either Schedule 60 PVC or in crosslinked polyethylene (PEX) pipe, because plastic pipe is less expensive to purchase, less expensive to transport, easier and faster to install, the tools are cheaper, and it's easier to find plumbers who work plastic than work metal today. Plastic pipe doesn't corrode either. In areas where the ground freezes routinely, they use PEX because it's flexible. There are transition fittings available to let you couple plastic to metal.

No one sits around planners' offices wondering what metal pipe technology is best for the job at hand; they install plastic pipe and are done with it.

There are places where you must use metal pipe. All gas service is metal pipe, including compressed air. Steam service is metal. Sanitary piping (foods, drugs, that kind of thing) uses metal pipe (specifically, ASTM 304 stainless steel) because they clean it with steam. Chemicals are handled in metal pipe, as are petroleum products. Most people plumb the hot-water side of water heaters with copper. Everything else went to plastic long ago--and some guys are starting to transition water heaters into CPVC with copper or stainless flex lines.

[HereSince1628]

9. Water in Waukesha WI doesn't meet standard for radioactivity

Not that it glows in the dark, but it hasn't met safe drinking standards in decades. They haven't figured out a way to eliminate it from the water which comes from wells but have been lobbying for changes in the regulations since at least 1988 (when I moved to Waukesha and read the interesting statement on my bill about the water not meeting the standard). Looks like their long battle is about over.

The alternative for Waukesha would be to buy L. Michigan water from Milwaukee.

[dusty64]

10. What the fuck?

:kick: