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Study Finds Few Violations Among Major Local Suppliers

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By Jason Brudereck, Reading Eagle, Pa., Reading Eagle, Pa.

Dec. 21--Major municipal water suppliers in Berks County had few water-testing and water-content violations from 1998 to 2003, according to a national study released Tuesday.

The county's largest water supplier, the Reading Water Authority, which serves about 87,000 customers, had one minor treatment violation and the authority supplied water containing five different contaminants during that period, according to Environmental Working Group, a Washingtonbased watchdog group.

None of the contaminants exceeded legal limits, the study said.

Dean A. Miller, authority operations director, said he hadn't seen the study but added that such a study wouldn't contain surprises for the authority because the authority is aware of any problems before any state or federal agencies are.

"We have requirements that must be reported monthly and we know the results on a daily basis, let alone monthly," he said.

Some smaller water suppliers in Berks, such as mobilehome parks that use well-water systems, had dozens of violations, which were mostly failures to report water-testing results.

Operators of some of those systems expressed surprise at the violations, saying they were never told about them.

Organizers of the study said that's likely because the data in the study are based on faulty data from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

"We sent this study out in advance for review by 500 different utilities across the country," said Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at Environmental Working Group. "They had similar concerns with the EPA data. It's sometimes not accurate. EPA obviously isn't checking its data and it's not acting on it."

The study showed the EPA doesn't do an adequate job looking at the safety of the nation's drinking water and hasn't set safety standards for many chemicals and contaminants, she said.

EPA spokesmen said the agency regularly considers risks from various contaminants and that most of the nation's water suppliers meet federal guidelines.

Houlihan countered that legal limits aren't necessarily safe.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Reading Eagle, Pa.

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Source: Reading Eagle

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