The Post reports today that the Environmental Protection Agency is considering changes to the Lead and Copper Rule, the federal standard which establishes how much lead and copper is safely permissible in water supplies and what actions are to be taken if those levels are exceeded. If adopted, the changes would force water utilities to conduct stricter testing, provide clearer notice to the public as to threats in drinking water, turn over test results to homeowners, and notify state and federal regulators as to any changes in water treatment.

Environmental activists and water-quality specialists have already expressed skepticism of the proposal, noting that it would not go far enough in addressing problems such as those that have plagued D.C. Paul Schwartz of Clean Water Action was quoted as saying that:

It's basically revisions at the margins. EPA refuses to acknowledge this is a national problem even when confronted with the evidence. The fact is EPA has not taken enforcement action upon utilities for their failure to adhere to the current rule.

Over the last decade, the District has had a love-hate relationship with the EPA. When bacteria was discovered in D.C. water in 1993, the EPA threatened the city with $5,000-a-day fines if residents were not warned to boil their water. Similar fines were threatened in 1996, when the EPA demanded that D.C. replace 1,286 miles worth of service pipes -- or else. The EPA responded tepidly, though, when high levels of lead were found in water supplies in 2002 and 2003, and has been criticized recently for its apparent sweep-it-under-the-carpet mercury clean-up at Cardozo High School and its distorted analysis of a federal plan to regulate mercury pollution from power plants.

The proposal has been motivated by recent experience in the District, where over the last two years officials from the EPA and the Water and Sewer Authority struggled to explain a rash of high lead readings in the water supplies of city residences. Although the lead contamination problem was identified as far back as 2002, WASA did not start notifying residents until late 2003, and it was only in early 2004 that they admitted that two-thirds of the 6,118 residences they had tested had water that exceeded the lead limit of 15 parts per billion. EPA regulators agreed to a WASA proposal to inform customers of the problem using a vague brochure, a far-cry from the news conference usually mandated for such announcements. The number of homes affected eventually rose to 23,000, and city officials responded by distributing free water filters and testing kits to eligible residents (this DCist contributor recently received a third shipment of filters, courtesy of the District government). WASA announced in late 2004 that it would begin a year-long replacement of 2,800 lead service lines, part of a larger 10-year, $300 million plan to rid the city of lead pipes once and for all.