LEAD ASTRAY
Lead contamination in municipal water systems systematically
underreported

If you live in the U.S., the water you drink may contain unsafe
levels of lead, thanks to a water-safety enforcement system rife with
manipulation and negligence.  Water utilities across the U.S. are
discarding unfavorable test results and ignoring safety regulations.
State regulators rarely enforce standards and in many cases assist
utilities in avoiding penalties.  The U.S. EPA, charged with
overseeing state efforts and penalizing utilities that fail to comply
with regulations, has drastically reduced enforcement in recent years
and doesn't have the staff to do the job adequately even if it wanted
to.  In 2003, the number of EPA enforcements against water utilities
was less than a tenth of the number in 1997.  Despite all this, EPA
Acting Assistant Administrator Benjamin Grumbles told Congress in
July that "we have not identified a systemic problem."  Perhaps he
should get in touch with the folks at The Washington Post.  Seems
they have.

straight to the source:  The Washington Post, Carol D. Leonnig, Jo
Becker, and David Nakamura, 05 Oct 2004
<http://grist.org/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=3254>

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d
To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in
the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil.
To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL)
Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives
Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------