Talk:Safe Drinking Water Act

Whistleblower protection

While whistleblower protection is an important topic, it does not merit an entire external links section on the page (this just looks like a link farm). The page is about drinking water, not whistleblowers. Unless User:Rrenner or someone can add some context as to how or why this section of the law has been used specifically with regards to drinking water. Kristan 14:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. It is a relatively minor provision in the SDWA. There is a separate page for whistleblower and links to DOL et al can be found there. Moreau1 02:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

General Style and Organization

Additional sections are needed to explain the major health issues that the SDWA addresses and how the programs work. The provisions that are currently discussed are OK, but need an overall contextual framework. (I have added some citations and clarifications, but more are needed.) For example, the "Lead Free" section should (briefly) explain the public health significance of lead in drinking water.

There is way too much unexplained jargon, e.g. community & non-community water systems, transient & non-transient, water system operator (i.e. a drinking water utility). The terms could be described on separate pages, or briefly explained on the SDWA page. Moreau1 02:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge from Drinking water quality legislation of the United States

Drinking water quality legislation of the United States is mostly redundant with this page. The SDWA is the only major federal law on drinking water. Moreau1 (talk) 02:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

All SDWA related pages should be reworked. SDWA should be about the SDWA. Other pages can be about the regulations. The Drinking water quality legislation of the United States page could be an overview of how drinking water is regulated (law, code, state and federal enforcement) pointing to some of the more specific pages, e.g. lead and copper, which also needs major work. Leef (talk) 15:38, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Would you like to propose an outline/overview of existing & new SDWA pages? Some separate pages on the major DW regulations (or groups of regs) is a good idea. Lead & copper does indeed need work. Other pages could cover VOCs, coliforms, DBPs, radionuclides, & CCR/information collection rules, for starters. Also separate pages for the UIC program and sole source aquifer rule would be nice.

I could see retaining the separate DWQ legislation page if it is brief and clearly directs readers-- and potential editors--to the SDWA & related pages. I would like to avoid parallel expansion of pages with needless duplication of effort, as I have observed on other topic areas. Maybe we could post some "ground rules" on the Talk page. Thanks. Moreau1 (talk) 02:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I worked up a quick outline. Out of laziness, I'm going to put it here instead of imposing it on the pages themselves. Although not shown in the outline, most of the National Primary Drinking Water Reg info here in SDWA will be removed (and combined or replaced by 40CFR141 section of DWQ page. From lack of vision, the outline follows the general outline of the federal laws and rules:

SDWA
 Background
 Description
   EPA to set mcls and goals for contaminants
   Variances/Exemptions
   Prohibition of use of lead pipes, solders, flux
   Monitoring
   Water supply Operators
   Capacity Development
   Water source protection
    UIC
    Well head protection
   Emergency Plans
   Record keeping requirements
   States to enforce if EPA criteria met
   Grants and funding to States and water systems      {{Unsigned|1=Leef|2=06:57, 4 October 2008 (UTC)}} <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
  USEPA
  [[links to DWQL and subpages|USEPA rules]]
 History
  Amendments

DWQLegisl
 Federal
  141 NPDWR
   General Concepts
    Sizes of systems
    Types of users
    Classes of contaminants
    Maximum Contaminant Level
    MCLG
    Public Notifications
   Specific Rules
    TCR
    [[LCR]]
    CCR
    SWTR
    DBP
    Others
  142 Implemention
   Primacy
    State Health Departments or Resource/Environment Departments
     Counties
  143 Secondary
   Not enforceable (but some states may adopt the federal recommendations as code
 State
  Cal
  NY
   PHL
   SSC
 Impact of the legislation
 History
  [Specifics of how subparts "evolved"]
 Criticism
  Regneg - not unique to Drinking Water, but no general page yet exists!?
  LCR
 Proposed
  Radon?

I haven't included an outline for the lead and copper rule, or any of the other sub pages. The intent would be to put general overviews in the DWQR page and create subpages as they became detail enough. I believe this approach agrees with your "brief and clear redirects" preference. The main difference is that I see the SDWA as an intro page and the DWQR page as the main page. This is because all the detail is in the implementation, not in the Congress's general wish that drinking water be safe. The outline is also soft on important peripheral issues like health effects or implications of the rules (or problems the rules are intended to combat), environmental and economic impacts, success/failure meeting goals, etc. I think these can be added into the subpages, perhaps similarly to a template. With the exception of the "impacts", most of the article will be paraphrased out of the federal (or state) law and code, so can be fully referenced by two external links (notwithstanding that the codes are amended often - do we need to reproduce a snapshot? See also the CFR page). Should the last 4 outline items be moved to within the "Federal" section?

I've got nothing on ground rules. Duplication is bad. Only careful use of summaries and links can help; this being a wiki. Leef (talk) 06:20, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Energy Policy Act 2005

Why is there no mention of the amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act under the Energy Policy Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2005? At present the history of the act jumps mysteriously from the 1990s to 2009. Was there never a mention of the 2005 amendment in relation to gas/oil mining - which was highly controversial - or was it removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mutants11 (talk • contribs) 03:16, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

The UIC section of the article currently has a sentence on the 2005 amendment:

"Congress amended the SDWA in 2005 to exclude hydraulic fracturing, an industrial process for recovering oil and natural gas, from coverage under the UIC program."

You are welcome to edit/add to that section and add material on other amendments. Please include references. Thanks. (Note: there is more detailed info at Hydraulic fracturing in the United States.) Moreau1 (talk) 04:53, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Water Drinking Problems Summary

This new summary section, inserted at the bottom of the article, is lacking context. Additionally, there are incorrect and vague statements about how the SDWA works. The References provided in this new section are not to be placed right after the text; they should placed in Wikipedia format, and they will then display properly in the existing "References" section for the overall article. See WP:REF.

The overall SDWA article currently describes what the basic elements of the SDWA are, and some of the related regulations. And that's about it. More work needs to be done in many sections of the article. Most importantly, there is no background section discussing the public health issues associated with drinking water, what programs and legal requirements were in place before passage of the SDWA, implementation problems, etc. There are a few separate, related articles which have some good information, e.g. Lead and copper rule and Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States, etc., but some expansion is needed here in the SDWA article.

Once a background section is added to the article, adding a section summarizing of existing problems with the law (and its implementation) would be useful. But this text must be accurate and fully referenced, in the proper format. Moreau1 (talk) 15:18, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I have removed the section from the article. The text & refs are provided below in case the author cares to attempt to respond to the above comments. (This text appears to be taken from some college class assignment and simply dropped in to this article, without regard for context or other WP policies.) Moreau1 (talk) 23:45, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

== Water Drinking Problems Summary ==

There have been many rules and guidelines established over the years in regards to improving drinking water quality, yet the public is still being exposed to copper, lead, and small levels of fluorine without having the option of doing so. The problem is that not all states of America are required to participate and follow the new regulations. A new plumbing infrastructure was proposed and developed, yet states with low governmental funds and districts containing poor single families are still exposed to lead and copper via old plumbing system. On the other hand, water treatment plants are required to remove bacteria and chemicals from drinking water, yet small amounts of sodium fluoride are being administered to water despite of knowing the dangers behind high fluoride intake and its effects on human body. Another problem is that the amount of water consumed by public is difficult to determine, as every individual drinks different amounts of water and is exposed to same chemicals through other products. The final issue that many seem to forget about or may not be aware of, is that the drinking water that undergoes treatments still has contaminates that may be of danger to immunocompromised individuals and young children. Such individuals are being forced into obtaining household water treatments in order to remove specific chemicals or bacteria from their household water, which should not be the case.

References:

Works Cited Page:

Brown, Mary J, and Margolis Stephen. “Lead in Drinking Water and Human Blood Lead Levels in the United States.” MMWR: Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 61, no. Supp, 10 Aug. 2012 Supplement, pp. 1–9. EBSCOhost. Web. 4 Apr. 2017. http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=95306cfe-7713-4fab-b5b3-8086d3782b5f%40sessionmgr4009&vid=5&hid=4206

“City Of Longmont." LongmontColorado, 2017. Web 15 Mar. 2017. https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-n-z/water/drinking-water

Prystupa, Jeff. "Fluorine--A Current Literature Review. An NRC and ATSDR Based Review of Safety Standards for Exposure to Fluorine and Fluorides." Toxicology Mechanisms & Methods, vol. 21, no. 2, Feb. 2011, pp. 103–170. EBSCOhost. Web. 29 March 2017. http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=5c5fa391-ce18-4a41-b2c6-1e52b4d0b3b7%40sessionmgr4007&vid=13&hid=4107

Wilking, Cara L., et al. "Harnessing the Public Health Power of Model Codes to Increase Drinking Water Access in Schools and Childcare." Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, vol. 43, 2015 Supplement s1, pp. 69–72. EBSCOhost. Web. 29 March 2017. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=89f5c1d8-1e63-4b7e-9c38-5745548182ce%40sessionmgr101&vid=4&hid=124