Florida Drinking Water 2nd Worst In Country: Study

Florida is the second worst violator of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act based on population, coming in behind Texas. An estimated 7.5 million people in Florida were potentially exposed to unsafe drinking water in 2015, according to a study released by the Natural Resources Defense Council earlier this week.

In its May 2017 report, the nonprofit environmental organization focused on violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act reported in 2015. The nonprofit's report calls the federal act “one of our bedrock environmental laws.” Put into place in 1974, the act tasks the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with identifying and regulating contaminants to “ensure drinking water quality,” the report explains. “These requirements are meant to protect us from serious health impacts – cholera outbreaks, lead poisoning, and even cancer.”

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The council has been tracking drinking water safety for more than 25 years. It asserts that the EPA and states have been falling short of the mark in meeting the mission to keep public drinking water safe.

While the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan, captured the national spotlight in 2015, the council said its analysis of EPA data found that Flint didn’t stand alone. “We found that in 2015, more than 18 million people were served by community water systems that had violated the Lead and Copper Rule, one of the EPA regulations issued to carry out the SDWA."

The council’s full report goes beyond the lead and copper rule to cover other act violations, as well.

See also: 28 Tampa Bay Towns Have Drinking Water Toxin Made Famous By Erin Brockovich, Study Finds

“Our research shows that in 2015 alone, nearly 77 million people were served by more than 18,000 community water systems that violated at least one SDWA rule, and there were more than 80,000 violations of SDWA rules that year,” the report contents. Violations included exceeding health-based standards, failing to test water properly and failure to report contamination to authorities and/or the public.

According to the council, the top five states with violations of the act by population were:

• Texas – 12,066,920 people served
• Florida – 7,540,465 people served
• Pennsylvania – 5,645,903 people served
• New Jersey – 4,487,703 people served
• Georgia – 3,846,734 people served

The full report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council is available online.

The report’s findings come following a study released in 2016 by the Environmental Working Group that claimed at least 28 communities in the Tampa Bay area had the cancer-causing toxin in their drinking water that was thrust into the national spotlight by the 2000 Julia Roberts’ movie “Erin Brockovich.”

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