Safe Drinking Water Act: Key Components

1. Safe Drinking Water Act: Key Components • Listing Contaminants: • Maximum Containment Level Goal (MCLG): • Maximum Containment Levels (MCL): - § 300f(6): Contaminants defined as “any physical, chemical, biological, or radiological substance or matter in water.” - § 300g-1(b)(1)(A): Contaminants are regulated if the Administrator determines that the contaminant “many have an adverse effect on the health of persons,” “is known to occur … in public water systems with a frequency and at levels of public health concern,“ and that regulation of such contaminant “presents a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction.” - § 300g-1(b)(4)(A) : For each contaminant, EPA must set a MCLG. - § 300g-1(b)(4)(A) : The MCLG is to be set at “the level at which no known or anticipated adverse effects on the health of persons occur and which allows an adequate margin of safety.” - § 300f(1)(B): EPA must set primary drinking water regulations, identifying contaminants “which … may have any adverse effect on the health of persons.” - § 300f(1)(C)(i): For each such contaminants, EPA must set a MCL if it is “economically and technologically feasible to ascertain the level of such contaminant in water.” - § 300f(3): MCLs must be “as close to the maximum contaminant level goal as is feasible” and constitute “the maximum permissible level of a contaminant in water which is delivered to any user of a public water system.”

2. Safe Drinking Water Act: Hybrid Risk Management Frameworks • Risk management framework applicable to HAPs under the CAA: • Risk management framework applicable to the SDWA: • Other hybrid risk management frameworks: - MACT: Technology-based framework; - More stringent standards: Negligible risk framework: “life excess cancer risk … less than one in one million.” - Outcome: The more stringent standards that would result from the technology-based and negligible risk frameworks. - MCLG: No risk framework. - MCL: Technology-based framework. - Outcome: The less stringent standards that would result from the technology-based and no-risk frameworks. - FIFRA.

3. Should Drinking Water be Regulated by the Federal Government? • Traditional Justifications for Federal Regulation: • Other Justifications for Federal Regulation: • Arguments Against Federal Regulation: - Interstate Externalities; - Race-to-the-Bottom; - Public Choice Pathologies. - Rights-based Justification. - Differences in size of public water systems across the nation; - Differences in cost in implementing federal controls; - De Minimis Exemptions.