Public Water System Supervision Program/Calendar Year 2018: Arkansas Department of Health Annual Report

The Arkansas Department of Health (“ADOH”) Drinking Water Program issued an annual report titled:

Public Water System Supervision Program – Calendar Year 2018 (“Report”)

The purpose of the Report is stated to be a summarization of the Arkansas Public Water System violations data submitted to the Safe Drinking Water Information System for the calendar year 2018.

ADOH has been delegated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act (“SDWA”) authority to implement this program. SDWA protects drinking water supplies. This protection is obtained through the United States Environmental Protection Agency establishment of standards for drinking water quality. The national standards or limits for contaminant levels in drinking water are known as Maximum Contaminant Levels (“MCLs”).

Such health-based standards for drinking water address both naturally-occurring and man-made contaminants that may be found in drinking water. The federal statute applies to every public water system in the United States.

The 1996 amendments to the SDWA require that the states prepare and submit to EPA an annual report addressing the numbers and types of violations of the SDWA regulations. The data included in the Report is described as:

• Public Water System Inventory Statistics
• Incidence of MCLs, Major Monitoring, and Treatment Technique Violations
• Enforcement Actions Taken Against Violators

ADOH also states that the Report provides a total annual representation of the numbers of violations for each of the four categories listed in Section 1414(c)(3) of the SDWA. The four categories include:

• MCLs
• Treatment Techniques
• Variances and Exemptions
• Significant Monitoring violations

A sampling of the data and/or violations referenced in the Report summary includes:

• 1,071 public water systems in operation in Arkansas during 2018
  • 689 community water systems
  • 35 non-transient, non-community water systems
  • 346 transient non-community water systems
• 258 major monitoring violations for 178 public water systems during 2018
• 277 MCL or Treatment Technique violations were issued in 2018 for 101 systems
• No variances or exemptions were issued to any public water system in Arkansas during 2018
• 96.3% of the public water systems in Arkansas did not have an organic MCL violation
• 100% of the public water systems in Arkansas did not have a nitrate MCL violation
• 99.9% of the community public water systems in Arkansas did not exceed the radium-226/228 MCL or either of the individual MCLs (one system received two violations)
• 11 inorganic chemical MCL violations for three water systems
• No monitoring violations for chemicals under Phases I, II, IIB, & V

A copy of the Report can be found here.