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Safe Drinking Water Act Was Essay

The EPA had been developing new regulations at a pace that was deemed too slow by Congress. Only one of the interim standards set in 1975 had been updated. There were also deficiencies in the implementation. Microbial contamination had not been sufficiently addressed. By the early 1980s, synthetic chemicals were being found in drinking water with increasing frequency. The 1986 Amendment therefore addressed these issues. Maximum levels for many contaminants were either set or updated. The Federal government also took a greater role in the provision of drinking water by compelling the EPA to establish regulations within specific time frames. Further amendments to the law were enacted in subsequent years, governing specific issues that had not been addressed in the original legislation. New components included stricter crackdown on coliform, the elimination of giardia, legionella and other pathogens and rules governing pipes and welding, specifically to curtail the use of lead and copper pipes.

The 1996 amendments brought the legislation into the modern era. These included specifics on funding, new risk-based criteria for standard-setting,...

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The funding was necessary in particular for small water systems that were having difficulty funding the required upgrades on their own. The amendments also included provisions about public notification and annual compliance reports.
Thus, over time, we can see the evolution of the Safe Drinking Water Act from its tentative beginnings in 1974 to a more strengthened version in 1986 and a fully workable version in 1996 that is essentially the same Act as we have today.

Works Cited:

No author. Safe Drinking Water Act. Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/sdwa/basicinformation.html

No author. (1999). 25 Years of the Safe Drinking Water Act: History and Trends. Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/epagov/www.epa.gov/safewater/consumer/trendrpt.pdf

No author. (2007). Safe Drinking Water Act. Water Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Re-St./Safe-Drinking-Water-Act.html

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited:

No author. Safe Drinking Water Act. Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/sdwa/basicinformation.html

No author. (1999). 25 Years of the Safe Drinking Water Act: History and Trends. Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/epagov/www.epa.gov/safewater/consumer/trendrpt.pdf

No author. (2007). Safe Drinking Water Act. Water Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Re-St./Safe-Drinking-Water-Act.html
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