Drinking Water Research

Public water systems are faced with regulations far more complex than in the past and whose costs could be significant for both the systems and their customers. Congress made significant changes in the way that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to set drinking water quality standards for public water systems. This report compares EPA's budget requests for drinking water research during fiscal years 1997 through 2000 with the amounts authorized by law; provides the views of stakeholders on whether EPA will be able to complete the research; and assesses EPA's drinking water research plans, projected funding, and anticipated accomplishments. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Drinking Water Research: Better Planning Needed to Link Needs and Resources, by Peter F. Guerrero, Director, Environmental Protection Issues, before the Subcommittee on Health and Environment, House Committee on Commerce. GAO/T-RCED-00-15, Oct. 20 (15 pages).

GAO noted that: (1) for fiscal years 1997 through 2000, EPA annually requested millions of dollars less than Congress authorized for drinking water research and regulatory development in the 1996 amendments, although the gap has narrowed recently; (2) for example, EPA requested $77.4 million for FY 1998, or nearly 24 percent less than the $101.6 million that was authorized for that year, but this gap was reduced to about 14 percent for FY 2000, since EPA requested $87 million of the $101.6 million authorized; (3) according to EPA officials, the agency's annual budget requests reflect the level of resources that agency officials believe is needed to fulfill EPA's mission and program responsibilities, within the planning ceilings and policy directives provided by the Office of Management and Budget; (4) however, because EPA does not generally prepare estimates of the total resources that will be needed to carry out multiyear research programs, there is no overall estimate of resource needs for drinking water with which to compare EPA's annual budget requests; (5) the stakeholders GAO interviewed all expressed concerns about the adequacy of the research for the upcoming regulations on: (a) arsenic; and (b) microbial pathogens, disinfectants (used to treat drinking water), and disinfection by-products, particularly in the areas of health effects and the analytical methods used to detect contaminants; (6) while EPA officials acknowledge that some high-priority research projects will not be completed in time for these regulations, they believe that the available research will be sufficient to support the regulations with sound science; (7) according to the stakeholders GAO interviewed, the potential consequences of not having adequate research to support upcoming regulations could be significant; (8) if EPA issues regulations that are more stringent than can be justified by the available science, then water utilities could bear unnecessarily high treatment costs; (9) on the other hand, if EPA decides to set a less stringent standard because some scientific data are not available, consumers could be exposed to harmful contaminants longer than necessary; and (10) EPA has prepared detailed research plans that identify the specific tasks that it needs to complete in order to support upcoming regulations on arsenic and microbial pathogens, disinfectants, and disinfection by-products.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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