INC NEWS - Editorial: All citizens deserve safe drinking water (Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

Editorial: All citizens deserve safe drinking water
Herald-Sun, 21 January 2007

Clean, safe drinking water is among the most important
services any city can provide. It ranks right up there
with police and fire protection. 

So, when questions are raised about whether a city's
water is safe to drink, citizens understandably turn
to government for answers. And when they do, it is
important that they believe the folks in charge are
being straight with them. 

The jury is still out as to whether Durham officials
are providing residents with all the information they
need to make good decisions about the city's drinking
water. We are encouraged, however, that a new,
expansive round of testing is planned for June, and
that officials now seem to understand that compliance
with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency testing
standards isn't a guarantee of safe water. 

"We can be in compliance [with federal regulations]
and still have a problem," City Manager Patrick Baker
said last week. "The only way we'll know we're on top
of the real problem, if there is one, is to do more
testing in 2007." 

Baker is also considering a "summit" to educate
citizens about the dangers of lead. He's also bringing
on board UNC's Water Resources Research Institute to
review Durham's testing program. These are both worthy
ideas. 

Baker knows it's important that Durham gets this
right. The truth is that previous testing for lead was
simply too limited in scope, and left too many
residents at risk. And what's more, the city appears
to have gone out of its way to avoid including water
samples from areas of the community that might throw
it out of compliance with EPA regulations. 

And even if the city really believed it was
technically meeting federal requirements, we would
hope, as we are certain all Durham residents do, that
officials would go the extra mile to ensure that all
citizens have water that is free of contaminants. 

The People's Alliance, a local political action
committee that's urging the city to expand lead
testing and education efforts about the dangers of
lead in tap water, was right last week when it said
the city seems caught up in efforts to prove that it
complied with EPA regulations, when the focus should
be on safe drinking water for everyone. 

"Even when you're in the state of EPA compliance, you
would still have as much as 10 percent of the
population potentially drinking contaminated water,"
said Sara Terry, a member of the alliance's
environmental committee. 

Given the serious dangers of lead, we think the EPA
regulations that require municipalities to focus on
homes built from 1982 to 1985 are inadequate. While
it's true homes built during those years are more
susceptible to have lead leach from the solder used in
plumbing, there are other older homes throughout the
city that are also at risk. 

Shouldn't we know if our tap water is tainted with
lead? 

The answer is obvious.