Today the United States Environmental Protection agency celebrates 50 years of research, monitoring, standard-setting, and enforcement activities to ensure a cleaner, healthier environment for all Americans.
The Office of Water has been instrumental in protecting drinking water across the country. Prior to the agency’s founding, 40% of drinking water systems failed to meet even the most basic standards! Since then the EPA has established protective drinking water standards for more than 90 contaminants and passed additional amendments to the 1974 Safe Drinking Water to protect drinking water and ensure communities are reporting water quality to the public. Now, 92% of community water systems meet the health-based standards.
Our water systems today face continuing challenges with the emergence of harmful algal blooms and per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The EPA continues to research these environmental problems and provide helpful applications for scientists, local leaders, and the general public such as the CyAN mobile application to detect and quantify algal blooms and related water quality via satellite data and the Drinking Water Treatability Database which helps communities identify effective treatment processes for contaminants in drinking water. Just this summer the EPA added information to this database about 4 new PFAS compounds.
Mundell & Associates congratulates the EPA for all their work these past 50 years contributing to our understanding of safe drinking water and helping to protect it for the people, economies, and communities of our nation!