Clinton Toughens Nation’s Water Pollution Standards

President Clinton unveiled some of the toughest water pollution standards in the nation’s history Thursday, with the goal of eliminating a deadly microbe from the nation’s drinking water and reducing the hazardous byproducts of disinfectants.

After touring a water treatment plant, the president also announced the award of nearly $870 million in grants to help states make low-interest loans to communities to improve their drinking water treatment, including $80.8 million, the largest single grant, for California.

“This is the sort of thing we ought to be doing in America. . . ,” the president said. “It’s a very important day.”

On a scenic overlook of Fort Adams State Park, while sailboats crossed Narragansett Bay behind him, Clinton also used the speech to make the broader argument that the fight to restore the environment can bring economic benefits rather than damaging the economy.

“We have got to get over this idea that protecting our environment and the quality of our lives is somehow bad for the economy. It will be one of the cheap generators of high-wage jobs in the 21st century,” the president said, on a brisk yet unseasonably mild day along the New England seashore.

The drinking water standards are intended to eliminate from tap water a minuscule microbial monster, known as cryptosporidium, that federal authorities estimate kills 900 people a year.

The regulations also are intended to reduce the potentially long-range interactions--which studies now link to increased risk of cancer, reproductive disorders and developmental problems--when chlorine and other chemicals are introduced to water supplies to kill bacteria and other dangerous agents found in ground and surface waters.

Sen. John H. Chafee, the Rhode Island Republican who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has called the toughened standards “without question the most significant and expansive safe-drinking-water regulations in the history of the issue.”

But although the new regulations were praised as overdue and far-reaching improvements, they were also criticized as insufficiently lax in fighting the introduction of such chemicals as trihalomethanes, one of the byproducts that occurs when disinfectants interact with organic and inorganic materials in drinking water.

“They’re a good first step, but they don’t go far enough,” said Jane Houlihan, a senior analyst on the staff of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based research and public interest organization.

In 1990, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board determined that exposure to bacteria, viruses and protozoa--among them giardia and cryptosporidium--was most likely the greatest remaining health risk associated with drinking water supplies.

In recent years, about 900,000 people annually have suffered the debilitating--and in some cases fatal--effects of drinking water contaminated with cryptosporidium. An outbreak in Milwaukee in 1993 has been blamed for as many as 104 deaths.

The EPA has estimated that the cost of implementing new treatment plans among all but the smallest water treatment systems will be $307 million and that, for more than 90% of those affected, the cost would mean increases of less than $1 in monthly water bills. The benefits, the agency predicted, would include savings of $263 million to $1.24 billion in costs associated with the waterborne illnesses. The White House estimates that the measures could prevent 460,000 illnesses each year.