A microcystin health advisory, policies to reduce agricultural runoff, and stronger investment in federal water infrastructure programs are all steps Congress and the Obama Administration should take to help drinking water systems protect their source waters against the threat of nutrient-fed algal blooms, AMWA wrote to members of a House Subcommittee this month.
AMWA submitted its letter for inclusion in the record of a November 19 hearing of the House Environment and the Economy Subcommittee, which was called to study threats posed by cyanotoxins to the nation’s drinking water supplies. The hearing was prompted in part by an August algal bloom in western Lake Erie that contaminated the drinking water of Toledo, Ohio with microcystin, a common cyanotoxin, for several days.
In its statement, AMWA wrote that EPA’s planned health advisory for microcystin “will help drinking water utilities and oversight authorities … prepare for, prevent, and, if necessary, respond to future algal pollution events.” The association did not call for a subsequent drinking water regulation for cyanotoxins or microcystin, but urged EPA to “carry out an impartial science-based analysis” of the contaminant’s appropriateness for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
AMWA’s other recommendations to Congress include policies to reduce the amount of nutrient-laced farm runoff that reach water bodies, promoting watershed management techniques, and increasing investment in federal infrastructure programs that communities may use to remove cyanotoxins from their water supplies.
In testimony before the subcommittee, EPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water Director Peter Grevatt said the agency plans to finalize a drinking water health advisory for microcystin sometime in the spring of 2015, but that the entire burden of reacting to cyanotoxin pollution should not be placed on water utilities and their ratepayers. Instead, Grevatt said EPA’s research into cyanotoxins should be augmented by “critical” efforts to improve source water protection and to ensure “adequate investment in our nation’s water infrastructure.”
Subcommittee members did not announce plans for legislative action focused on algal blooms, but said they would closely monitor EPA’s work on the health advisory. West Virginia Republican David McKinley also directed some light criticism at EPA, noting that recent agency budget proposals have sought cuts to the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Fund programs.
Rep. McKinley recommended that future EPA budgets prioritize water infrastructure over climate change initiatives, but subcommittee ranking Democrat Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) pointed out that some climate change effects (such as more frequent heavy rain events and higher temperatures) could lead to additional nutrient runoff – and cyanotoxin pollution – reaching source waters.