Water quality
The failure of state regulators to adequately enforce safe drinking water standards could have "serious public health implications," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection in a Dec. 30 letter.
(PennLive file photo)
Pennsylvania should find the money to hire more inspectors to address deficiencies in drinking water oversight, federal regulators told the state Department of Environmental Protection last month.
In December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned of "serious public health implications" because the state did not have enough staff to adequately inspect public water systems.
The DEP's response included a plan to raise $7.5 million through fees paid by the water systems. That solution, however, could take two years or more to implement because it requires a rule change.
"EPA remains concerned about Pennsylvania's program performance in the interim until staff are hired in 2018 and trained and productive in the year afterward," Dominique Lueckenhoff, of the EPA's Philadelphia regional office, wrote in an April 12 letter to the DEP and obtained by former DEP Secretary David Hess.
Lueckenhoff said the DEP should seek a temporary funding source to begin hiring additional inspectors sooner than its timetable called for.
J.J. Abbott, a spokesman for Gov. Tom Wolf, said the administration is in the process of determining whether temporary funding for inspectors is available.
"That said, the commonwealth's financial picture makes this difficult," he said, "and the prospect of potential federal cuts at the EPA complicates this matter even further."
As lawmakers and the governor enter what could be a fraught budget season, the state's deficit has grown to more than $1 billion, according to recent Independent Fiscal Office estimates. Meanwhile, federal funding for environmental programs under President Donald Trump remains uncertain.
"Frankly, President Trump's EPA should commit to not cutting federal funding before asking states to spend more," Abbott said.
In previous correspondence with the state, the EPA reported that each of the 54 inspectors monitors 157 public water systems, on average. The workload is far too great to meet the minimum requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
On Tuesday, a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that 167 drinking water systems that served 691,000 Pennsylvanians violated SDWA standards in 2015. Pollutants including coliforms and nitrates found in those systems could impact public health, the report found.
The EPA warned that DEP could lose primacy over those standards. Primacy is the ability for Pennsylvania to regulate itself. Without it, the EPA could take over enforcement and the state could lose roughly $100 million in federal funds that water systems rely on to pay for improvements.
Lueckenhoff did not threaten a loss of primacy in the most recent letter to the DEP and noted that the "EPA is encouraged by [the DEP's] plan to increase program revenue through its regulatory fee package."
Hess, who served as environmental secretary under Gov. Tom Ridge and now works as a lobbyist, said he'd categorize the EPA's April letter as "a strong suggestion" to the state.
"There isn't anything binding about it but clearly the EPA felt strongly enough to put it in the letter and express the obvious fact that the sooner DEP hires the staff, the better," he said.
It's incumbent upon the governor to ask the Legislature to increase funding, Hess said, rather than waiting on the Legislature to act on its own.
And he would not draw any conclusions from the letter about the Trump administration's intentions with regard to environmental policy or funding.
"This isn't routine," he said, "but it is part of the responsibility of EPA Region III to oversee Pennsylvania and other states that have primacy. I wouldn't take it as some signal or turning point or pivot--they're doing what they're responsible for doing and that's overseeing the Safe Drinking Water Program."
There was good news in a completely separate area, however, with the Trump administration indicating that the president would sign a federal appropriations bill that includes $73 million for the EPA's Chesapeake Bay program.
The budget proposal Trump released in March zeroed out funding for the program, which is meant to improve water quality in the Chesapeake and its tributaries, including the Susquehanna River.
