Today We Celebrate 50 Years of Safe Drinking Water!
December 16, 2024The Safe Drinking Water Act was signed into law in 1974 to authorize enforceable standards for drinking water quality.
Today marks an important anniversary for the water coming out of your tap: Fifty years of the Safe Drinking Water Act!
Administered through science-based EPA regulations, SDWA sets stringent and clear standards that all water utilities and systems are required to meet.
The law has kept up with changing times and evolving science, and it has been updated several times to address emerging threats to our drinking water.
Signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act was, quite literally, a watershed moment for public health and safety. It set federally mandated standards regarding the quality of Americans’ drinking water, and introduced regulation of water supplies on the state, local and national levels.
A Water Quality Game-Changer
Although there were already some laws concerning water safety on the books, they were, by and large, outdated and ineffective: According to the EPA, Federal regulation of drinking water dated back to 1914, when “the U.S. Public Health Service set standards for the bacteriological quality of drinking water. The standards applied only to water systems which provided drinking water to interstate carriers like ships, trains, and buses, and only applied to contaminants capable of causing contagious disease.”
According to the EPA, in the 1960s, concerns about pollution and the discovery of “organic contamination in public drinking water and the lack of enforceable, national standards persuaded Congress to take action.”
One problem was that agriculture and industry had been using new chemicals that were ending up in water supplies because of discharge practices and runoff.
“A study in 1972 found that 36 chemicals were detected in treated water taken from treatment plants that drew water from the Mississippi River in Louisiana. As a result of this and other similar studies, new legislative proposals for a federal safe drinking water law were introduced and debated in Congress in 1973.”
An Evolving Process
Since the law’s passage, water quality has vastly improved. Gone are problems like Ohio’s flaming Cuyahoga River, which was so polluted with chemicals that the surface ignited numerous times, including an oft-cited blaze in June 1969 that nearly destroyed two bridges.
Municipal water supplies, such as those provided by LCA, undergo rigorous testing and treatment to ensure the highest quality. Efforts are made to protect water at its source — to keep the contaminants from ever reaching the water in the first place. And there is more public awareness about the importance of clean water than ever before.
There is, of course, still much work to be done to protect water quality, and amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act over the years reflect its ability to evolve and change with the times.
The 1996 amendment, for instance, recognized “source water protection, operator training, funding for water system improvements, and public information as important components of safe drinking water.” It effectively broadened the approach to safe drinking water through protection from “source to tap.”
If you ever have questions or concerns about the quality of your drinking water, don’t hesitate to contact us. And to read more about The Safe Water Drinking Act, check out this page from the EPA.
To find out what we do to your water supply, go to our “About Your Water” page and click on your municipality for an explanation. And if you haven’t already, check out the “Lead-Free” page to learn about our work to identify and remove lead from the water system—another water quality improvement that can be directly traced to the Safe Drinking Water Act!
Timeline of the SDWA
1974 Safe Drinking Water Act was signed into law to protect public health by authorizing national enforceable standards for drinking water quality.
1986 Congress amends the SDWA to include a new program to protect underground sources of drinking water. The 1986 amendments also banned the use of lead pipes, lead solder and flux from new potable water plumbing. EPA was instructed to regulate 83 contaminants in drinking water within three years.
2005 The SDWA is amended to enhance security measures to safeguard the nation’s drinking water infrastructure from potential terrorist threats.
2011 Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act revised the definition of lead-free to lower the allowable maximum lead content of lead in plumbing components.
2013 Community Fire Safety Act exempted fire hydrants and some other specific water system components from lead-free definition.
2016 Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act— renews focus on reducing exposure to lead through enhanced public notice and attention to lead in schools and childcare facilities. Also includes an emphasis on funding for disadvantaged communities.
2018 America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 amends SDWA to require community water systems to assess and prepare response plans for both natural hazards and malevolent threats.
2024 The water sector celebrates 50 years of safe drinking water while looking ahead to future improvements of the act.