All 50 states told the Environmental Protection Agency they’re in line with federal standards for implementing the Lead and Copper Rule for drinking water in the wake of the crisis in Flint, Mich.
In a letter to state regulators Thursday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the agency received responses from all 50 states stating that their protocols and procedures for finding lead and copper in drinking water were consistent with EPA guidance. McCarthy initially asked for a review in late February, more than a month after lead-contaminated drinking water prompted President Obama to declare a water emergency in Flint.
McCarthy wrote Thursday that the EPA will be working to help states implement the testing procedures, including corrosion control.
“EPA staff will be following up with every state to ensure that these protocols and procedures are clearly understood and are being properly implemented to address lead and copper issues at individual drinking water systems, and to offer EPA assistance if needed,” McCarthy wrote.
“In addition, we will continue to work with states to ensure that lead action level exceedances and LCR violations are promptly and appropriately addressed,” she added.
Flint switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure at the behest, and approval, of state officials in April 2014. Since then, the more corrosive Flint River water ate away at lead pipes leading from city water mains to people’s homes, causing lead to leach into their drinking water.
A state investigation found the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality was ultimately responsible for the crisis. Two agency employees have been criminally charged in the case.
The EPA announced last month that the water is now safe to drink if it is filtered.
Michigan regulators have argued that they followed proper EPA Lead and Copper Rule procedures in Flint, but the testing schedules enshrined in the regulation were too long to protect the people of the eastern Michigan city of 100,000. The state was in the process of conducting the second of two six-month testing periods to see if corrosion control was needed in the city’s water supply to keep pipes from corroding.
At that time, the pipes had been corroding and sending lead into the city’s drinking water for months.
McCarthy told regulators that the agency is working on updates to the Lead and Copper Rule, which hasn’t had a major overhaul since its inception in 1991.
“I want to acknowledge that there is also important work to be done to strengthen the [rule],” she wrote, “and that certain systems will need continued assistance and oversight while we work with the states to develop proposed revisions to the rule.”
