> In May 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled not to place regulations on the amount of perchlorate that can be allowed in drinking water.
Predictable. Just 150 days left to vote.
Predictable. Just 150 days left to vote.
Instead, EPA has been pursing less formal measures to reduce perchlorate in the specific drinking water systems where it has been found: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-notes-successes-reducin...
As one of “those people” who thinks it’s harmful to have a national regulation where a more local one will do, I don’t see the problem with this. There are many kinds of pollution that are national in nature, but drinking water is actually fairly localized. There is no evidence perchlorate pollution migrates great distances, so why do we need an nationwide regulation?
It should be noted that drinking water systems are almost entirely run by public entities, and already face massive funding challenges. When the EPA sets maximum allowable levels of a pollutant, it triggers a huge bureaucratic framework that everyone must follow. Is it unreasonable to decide that we don’t need to force everyone to go that far for a chemical that appears in possibly concerning levels in less than 1% of systems?
This is an excellent example of how even the slightest push back on the notion that the federal government should regulate anything and everything is treated by the media as a crisis of epic proportions. You didn’t know what perchlorate was before this article, and it doesn’t affect 99% of water systems out there, but the EPA declining to create nationwide monitoring and enforcement framework for the chemical is somehow “madness.”
The EPA isn’t leaving it to local governments whether to test or to decide what the levels should be. They’re concluding that, based on testing they already did, there is no need to require formal monitoring of perchlorate in every water system just because a tiny minority of systems have concerning levels of the chemical. And it’s handling those exceptions on a case-by-case basis.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-sus...
Some things don't need to be checked. Some reporting can be postponed.
You don't get to dump truckloads of barium perchlorate into the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-rsquo-s-epa...
IANAL and don't have skin in this game. I did, however, volunteer at a treehugger org for a decade. The mission was to protect wetlands for fish, birds, flood control, pollution. I got hear plenty from the org's scientists and lawyers about the merits of self-policing.
And maybe that's fine! But the supposition that the EPA setting a standard relevant to tens of thousands of municipal water districts will generate zero costs for those municipalities glosses over how the bureaucratic wheels turn.
Do you really believe that water pollution is only a problem to be handled by people who are downstream and not a shared responsibility?
But what doesn’t come floating down the river is perchlorate. Accepting that the EPA must regulate certain types of water pollution doesn’t mean that all water pollution must be regulated at the federal level.
That's not what he said. He said perchlorate pollution in water does not necessitate national regulation given the data. That says nothing about other chemicals which may disperse more widely or whose use is so common as to contaminate many water systems.
> All in all, “we have an incredibly safe and reliable water supply” in the United States, said David Jones, professor of history of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The article you linked appears to be about comparing treated water to "raw water", which seems rather tangential to our discussion of considering the quality of treated water.
I'm just saying, a lot of people have implicit trust in their water without even knowing what's in it or why 0.62% of americans with perchlorate are somehow clumped in with the americans who are lucky to not have it in their water—surely this would be a success because only 0.62% of water needed extra infrastructure investment and regulation?
After all, perchlorate is unlikely to remain at such a low penetration with continued use....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law#United_S...
They know this stuff is bad but they are confident their wealthy town or county will not allow it to impact the drinking water supply. It'll be "someone else most likely poorer areas" problem.
> Many in the media have parroted the absurd claim that the water crisis was caused by austerity, as if the government cared more about saving pennies than saving lives. The truth is exactly the opposite: Keeping DWSD as Flint's water provider was a cheaper option, but one that would have created zero new infrastructure jobs
Btw, it’s absolutely unacceptable to justify the degradation of water quality with jobs. Regardless the reasoning it was entirely irresponsible given the infrastructure in the area.
Anyway it’s not like there’s any shortage of examples that austerity leads to loss of life.
Also ran: Chrome-6 https://www.ewg.org/release/ewg-brockovich-carcinogen-found-...
Cheers!
that is the strangest re-telling of the Flint water-quality story that i've ever heard.
Nearly everything indicates that the steps in Flint were cost-saving measures that the citizens either 1) didn't know about, 2) were told that there wouldn't be problems, and 3) were promised health concerns wouldn't be a factor.
Where exactly does this 'wealthy town that's overly confident" narrative fit? That hasn't been my perception at all with Flint.
Even as detailed by the left-leaning NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378...
So, no. They don't really live in the same environment as everyone else. Why would they care about its destruction?
"Freedom" is more important, apparently. /s
For (absurd) example, does this ruling mean that I could give a child a glass of "water" that's 50% perchlorate, and because of EPA's ruling I'm legally untouchable?