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An Historical Persepctive of the Regulation of Water Pollution, and the Implications of the 1996 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act
By Barbara E. Wise
Excerpt from An Historical Persepctive of the Regulation of Water Pollution, and the Implications of the 1996 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act:
Groundwater contamination is relatively new on the nation's list of recognized environmental problems. It was long believed that groundwater was naturally protected by the layers between the earth's surface and the water table, which people believed would filter out contaminants. In the 1970's groundwater contaminations began receiving notice in the popular press. In the most publicized of these incidents--known as Love Canal--President Carter declared an emergency in Niagara Falls, New York, because of health concerns linked to groundwater contamination. The US public response to this growing perception of a threatened resource with unknown human health impacts has generally been to demand restoration of the groundwater to drinking water standards.The purpose of this paper is to explore the major issues underlying the historical problems in the environmental regulation of the surface waters, drinking water and groundwaters, to examine the resulting shift in political ideology proposed as a solution to those problems, and to discuss the major statutory changes in regulation in 1996 that resulted