A ranking of the Safe Drinking Water Act violations puts Wisconsin 12th worst in the United States by one measurement, according to a new study by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The study released Tuesday by the environmental advocacy group lists nearly 1,400 violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act by public wells in Wisconsin, resulting in the state’s 12th worst ranking for the number of violations per the number of people using community wells.
There were more than 80,000 reported violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act nationally, according to the study.
Across the U.S. the federal government needs to put more money into the public water supply infrastructure, said Erik Olson, director of NRDC’s health program.
"We’re living off of our great grandparents investments.
A lot of these water systems are 100 years old or older and need to be updated," Olson said.
"The fix is to invest in two things: common sense enforcement of the law and the other is water infrastructure investments."
Our robust system to discover violations early is likely more comprehensive than other states, meaning violation numbers may seem high when looking just at EPA data, which some broadly interpret as a widespread problem, but in fact our system enables us to identify more problems quicker and allows us to assist systems in getting them resolved quicker, which in turn gets clean, safe water back on line for the public quicker.
It’s still reported to (the) EPA as a violation, but the community system is still serving the public with clean, safe water from its other sources.
A federal program will provide $1 billion in credit to finance $2 billion in work.