Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act program, focusing on: (1) the extent to which community water systems complied with the act's requirements for monitoring water supplies and meeting drinking water standards; (2) EPA and state enforcement programs' effectiveness in ensuring compliance; and (3) the potential impacts of new drinking water requirements.
GAO found that EPA studies showed that some violations at the water system level were not detected because of: (1) sampling errors by water system operators; (2) the increasingly technical nature of water sample collection; and (3) inadequately trained or inexperienced operators, particularly at small systems. GAO also found that: (1) some identified violations were not reported to EPA; (2) some states adopted policies suspending or restricting certain EPA monitoring requirements, resulting in water systems not performing all required tests; (3) key data needed to determine water system compliance relied on inadequate state tracking systems; and (4) EPA and the states will face increasing financial and regulatory burdens resulting from new drinking water standards.
