50 years of the Safe Drinking Water Act — from reducing waterborne diseases of the past to battling toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in the future

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In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency found chemical companies were discharging industrial waste into the Mississippi River, which Louisiana residents relied on for drinking water.

Two years later, the agency found high concentrations of 66 chemicals and toxic metals in drinking water supplies drawn from the river.

A study determined the carcinogens in the drinking water could be causing the high cancer rates in the area between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which was later dubbed “Cancer Alley.” The response was the creation of the Safe Drinking Water Act — the first federal law that set standards for the nation’s drinking water. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the legislation, which was signed into law Dec. 16, 1974, by President Gerald Ford.

“There was public doubt about the quality of drinking water in 1974,” said Bruno Piggot, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for water. “There were perceptions amongst the public that the water just wasn’t as good as it could have been.”

Two years prior, the Clean Water Act was enacted. The monumental law regulated discharges into waterways, such as the Delaware River, which was once described as a “stinky, ugly mess.” At the time, the city of Philadelphia relied heavily on chlorine to prevent the pollutants in the Delaware River from entering drinking water, giving it a bad taste.

While the Clean Water Act regulated discharges to waterways, and required upgrades to wastewater treatment plants, the Safe Drinking Water Act regulated the contaminants that flowed out of peoples’ taps by setting limits for certain chemicals in drinking water.

After the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act, waterborne diseases plummeted, water monitoring increased and more funding was allocated to upgrade drinking water treatment.

“There’s just been a lot of real progress in terms of requirements, minimum standards, monitoring that is required, the collection of data,” said Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel for the environmental group Earthjustice. “We just know a lot more about our water sources, where we get our water from.”

Though much progress has been made, some environmentalists say there are flaws and, sometimes, an uneven distribution of resources.

“Not everybody has benefited from those advances equally,” Gonzalez said. “It really depends what community you live in and whether they have a history of enjoying some of those water infrastructure investments.”

By 2015, almost 77 million Americans lived in regions with water systems that did not meet the safety standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Pennsylvania and New Jersey were among the top five states for violations when measured by population size.

“In low-income communities, in Black communities and tribal communities, they’re more worried about their water than most folks,” Gonzalez said. “And they’re right to be more worried because their water is more likely to be contaminated. They’re more likely to live in places where the local public water system has Safe Drinking Water Act violations.”

Over the past four years, significant progress has been made to improve drinking water. President Joe Biden’s administration has invested more than $50 billion to remove lead pipes over the next 10 years, improve wastewater infrastructure and remove toxic contaminants such as PFAS.

The EPA now requires water providers to remove so-called “forever chemicals” to almost zero. The chemicals, found in hundreds of everyday products, have been linked to serious health problems, including some cancers.

The EPA’s Piggot said the Safe Drinking Water Act paved the way for the agency to implement stricter regulations for PFAS in drinking water.

“The work that’s been done this year to put in place new, incredibly protective standards for drinking water from PFAS, and the regulation that ensured that all the communities around the country replaced their lead service lines in 10 years, are fully within the framework of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” he said. “The Safe Drinking Water Act established, if you will, the rules of the road, the process by which we make a determination about whether to regulate, and then at what levels to regulate.”

Joe Manko, who in 1974 was the EPA’s regional counsel for Pennsylvania and several other East Coast states, said the Safe Drinking Water Act’s significance remains to this day.

“It’s grown in importance in the sense that they have found more pollutants that they didn’t know about back in the ‘70s,” Manko said.

Nicholas DeBenedictus, who worked for the EPA in the Philadelphia region in 1974, said he believes the drinking water in the region is the safest it’s ever been.

“I think it’s probably as good as anywhere in the country,” DeBenedictus said.

However, paying for the expensive infrastructure required to meet new EPA standards remains a challenge, and municipalities must decide how to prioritize upgrades if they want to avoid passing the burden to ratepayers, he said.

The EPA now regulates more than 90 contaminants in drinking water, but most of these regulations were established more than 25 years ago. The agency has been criticized by some environmentalists for waiting this long to set enforceable limits on the amount of PFAS allowable in drinking water.

Today, Earthjustice is calling for new changes to the act that would allow the EPA to regulate contaminants more frequently, and for stronger enforcement of the law.

The future of drinking water regulations under a Trump administration also remains uncertain. Though President-elect Donald Trump has promised the “cleanest air and water on the planet” under his leadership, environmental advocates fear efforts to protect the public against PFAS and lead could be curtailed.

Earthjustice’s Gonzalez said he worries the incoming Trump administration might cut the EPA’s resources.

“[It’s] going to become harder when EPA has less funding, when the regional offices that EPA relies on to do investigations have less funding to do their investigations,” he said. “I fully expect that this administration, as well as their allies in Congress, are going to attempt to make it much harder for EPA to do its job, and for states to do their job, and for cities to do their job.”