Report: Safe drinking water provided at a bargain price

Weekly News Article Published: July 15, 2008 by the Central Office

MADISON – Gas may be topping $4 a gallon, but at a cost of three-tenths of one cent per gallon, the water supplied by Wisconsin’s public drinking water systems remains a bargain and among the cleanest in the world, according to “Safe Water on Tap,” the annual drinking water report the Department of Natural Resources submits to the federal government.

“From the state’s largest municipalities, to rural schools and restaurants, Wisconsin’s public water systems have done an exemplary job in providing safe drinking water at a bargain price,” says Drinking Water and Groundwater Director Jill Jonas. “More than 96 percent of them fully observed standards set to protect the public’s health and they delivered a full day’s supply to a family of four for less than $1.”

Jonas says that compliance is particularly impressive given the severe flooding in August 2007 in southeastern and southwestern Wisconsin. No municipal water treatment plants were contaminated as a result of the flooding, a reflection of work done by the local utilities and the DNR over the previous decade to move drinking water wells to higher ground.

Wisconsin and other states are required to submit an annual report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the overall performance of public water supplies in their state. Public water systems are those serving at least 25 people at least 60 days a year. They range from small restaurants and motels up to the state’s largest cities.

Wisconsin has more public water suppliers than all other states but Michigan. The 11,493 public water systems in Wisconsin serve more than 4 million Wisconsinites, and the systems’ 96.2 percent compliance rate in 2007 reflects well on those partners that help provide safe drinking water says Lee Boushon, DNR Public Water Supply Chief.

Those partners include the public water systems themselves, laboratories, the trade associations and counties under contract with DNR to help provide some services and training, the DNR public water supply staff who regulate the water systems, and the DNR community financial assistance staff who provide and administer low-interest loans to help communities pay for infrastructure improvements.

In 2007, the DNR provided $47.6 million in low-interest loans, to help 13 communities to get their drinking water infrastructure projects done at about 20 to 30 percent less than what the cost would have been without low-interest loans.

“We were able to make available twice as much funding from the previous year to help local communities make the needed investments to provide safe drinking water safe into the future,” Boushon says. “That’s good news for those communities, and for those applicants next in line for low-interest loans.”

A 2003 survey of the state’s water supply infrastructure needs suggests that $1.054 billion in infrastructure is needed over the next 20 years. Nationally, the tab is an estimated $270 billion.

The 431 public water supply systems reporting water samples with contaminant levels exceeding health standards represent 3.8 percent of the total number of systems. About 70 percent of those systems are from a category with 9,515 systems that includes motels, restaurants, parks, taverns, churches and campgrounds.

Elevated contaminant levels did not mean that people who drank the water got sick; it means users were exposed to what EPA has judged to be an unreasonable risk of illness, or that the system failed to treat its water to extent necessary. The maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, vary by contaminant and are set to prevent against sudden illness and health problems after a lifetime of drinking the water.

Bacterial contamination remained the top concern, with 3.1 percent exceeding the health based standards. Radium followed as the second most common violation. However, all but three of the 31 systems serving water that exceeded health-based standards for radium have since come into compliance. Radium is a naturally occurring contaminant that can increase the risk of cancer when people are exposed to high levels in drinking water over their lifetime. As of September 2007, only three systems continued to serve water that exceeded the radium standard: Waukesha, Fond du Lac and Lake Meadows Water Trust.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Jill Jonas (608) 267-7545; Lee Boushon (608) 266-0857

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Last Revised: Tuesday, July 15, 2008