The Bush administration had sharply reduced allowable
levels of arsenic in drinking water this year,
a top White House official said.
"We will have a tougher standard
on arsenic than was in place for the entire eight
years of the previous Democrat regime. We'll have
at least a 60 percent tougher standard on arsenic,
and we will have it this year," senior presidential
adviser Karl Rove said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"It won't take us eight years
to fiddle around on this. We'll put it in force
this year," he added.
"George W. Bush tried to roll back protections
against arsenic in drinking water and salmonella
in school lunches."
The ad represented a public relations
offensive by the DNC, which is seeking to portray
President Bush as an environmental extremist who
is tied to corporate, big-business interests.
"I was shocked," Mr.
Rove said of the DNC commercial.
The administration has taken a
lot of heat on environmental issues, especially
regarding an announcement made in March that it
was setting aside a tougher standard for arsenic
set by former President Clinton in the final days
of his administration.
Since 1942, the standard has been
50 parts per billion. But Mr. Clinton reduced
it to 10 parts per billion, following studies
that indicated arsenic causes cancer in humans.
Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Christie Whitman responded to the
public outcry over the administration's initial
action by announcing she would seek a new regulation
that allows between three and 20 parts per billion.
Mr. Rove's commented - "We'll
put it in force this year" - made it sound
as if the new standard would take effect in 2001.
But Mrs. Whitman has previously said it would
take effect in 2006, the same timetable established
for the Clinton regulation.
In his television appearances,
Mr. Rove declined to predict what the new standard
will be.
"We're going to use sound
science to arrive at the right level. Canada has
25, EU [the European Union] has 10. There are
varying standards around the country, some [states]
with 10, some with 20," the senior aide said
on CNN.
"But we're going to use sound
science to arrive at it so we don't have a situation
where we put in place a regulation that has the
unintended consequence of driving some communities
off of municipal water systems that extend into
wells, where they will drink water with naturally
occurring arsenic with levels far above that,"
Mr. Rove said.
He pointed out that cities such
as Albuquerque, N.M., and Salt Lake City have
so much naturally occurring arsenic in their water,
they would be unable to meet a standard of 10
parts per billion "without retrofitting a
substantial part" of their water systems.
The World Health Organization endorses
a standard of 10 parts per billion, but Mr. Rove
says it is yet to be determined whether that figure
constitutes sound science.
"This limit of 10 was arrived
at by using a test group of malnourished Taiwanese
farmers who drank water that has naturally occurring
arsenic concentrations of between 100 and 500
parts per billion," he said.
The current drinking standard for
water, set at 50 ppb (parts per billion), is viewed
by many experts as inadequate, especially in light
of recent scientific studies showing a link between
ingestion of trace amounts of arsenic and certain
forms of cancer. For this reason, many are lobbying
EPA to lower arsenic standards to as low as 3
ppb.
For many communities, complying
with these new standards will be relatively easy.
They simply will use their supplies of relatively
clean water to dilute water with higher trace
levels of arsenic.
But herein lies the rub: Some states
lack any water supplies with arsenic levels below
the 3 ppb standard that ultimately may be imposed
by EPA. Under the circumstances, many of these
utilities will find it virtually impossible to
comply with this new standard without a massive
infusion of funds.
So the question remains:
Who will foot the bill?
The only solution seems to be privatization.
References:
1. The Washington Times. Publication
Date: July, 2002. Page Number: B05.
2. The Washington Times. Publication Date: April,
2001. Page Number: 6.
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