first published week of: 04/25/2016
Some states and water utilities are balking at the Environmental Protection Agency’s call to post inventory information online about the number and locations of risky lead pipes in their systems, according to a review of documents obtained from 49 states by the USA TODAY NETWORK.
“We do not have the initial materials inventory from systems readily available and do not intend to spend valuable staff resources sifting through microfilm ...”South Dakota’s water regulatory agency to EPA
Drinking water regulators in about a dozen states expressed varying degrees of resistance or concerns about the EPA’s directive encouraging water systems to voluntarily give consumers easy access to what utilities know about homes receiving drinking water through lead service lines, a key indicator of whether a home's tap water could be contaminated and whether utilities are complying with testing regulations.
“We do not have the initial materials inventory from systems readily available and do not intend to spend valuable staff resources sifting through microfilm to find this information,” South Dakota’s water regulatory agency told the EPA, saying in its March 7 letter that it would instead post details about the subset of homes where each utility takes its water samples. continued…