Regulatory compliance planning to ensure water supply safety

The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, caused a sea change in the sense of safety and protection that most Americans felt regarding the threat of externally imposed harm. This article, which is JOURNAL AWWA's annual review of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA's) drinking water regulatory agenda under the Safe Drinking Water Act, has been expanded to include emergency planning that incorporates responses to both natural disasters and the deliberate introduction of contaminants into a water supply. Although information is generally limited on safe levels in drinking water for chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the introduction of an exotic contaminant into a drinking water supply as a WMD is very difficult. Thus, it is generally not considered to be a likely threat. A more likely threat would probably come from contamination by a currently regulated chemical or microorganism or a common unregulated chemical or microorganism-contaminants that a water treatment system would not be designed to remove or inactivate because the agent would normally not be expected to occur. As the rulemaking process moved forward during 2001, the final filter backwash recycle rule was issued in June, and a review of the final arsenic rule previously issued in January 2001 resulted in a USEPA announcement Oct. 31, 2001, that the agency simply intended to let the January 2001 rule go into effect. In the area of microbial/disinfection by-product (M/DBP) rules, formal proposed rules for the Stage 2 DBPR and Long-term Stage 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule are expected in November 2002, and a final rule is expected in November 2003. Although several statutory deadlines were missed in 2001, final action is expected on several major rules in 2002, including the radon rule and the Ground Water Rule. The article and the accompanying tables also update the scope, status, and schedules of numerous other key regulations under development by USEPA.-GSM.