WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced plans to overhaul its efforts to safeguard drinking water and to tighten restrictions on four waterborne compounds that cause cancer.
Officials said the steps will help regulators identify contaminants faster and move quickly with new technologies to prevent harm to consumers. Environmentalists expressed hope that the moves will break a regulatory logjam at the EPA, which has not listed a new water contaminant for regulation in more than a decade.
Currently, the EPA examines potential contaminants one by one, a process that can drag on for years and drain resources. As part of the overhaul, the EPA will begin to consider contaminants in groups — such as pesticides, disinfection byproducts or volatile organic compounds.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson also announced that the EPA will move to tighten limits on four specific contaminants that cause cancer because scientific advancements allow them to be detected at lower levels. The compounds are tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE), which are used in industrial and textile processes, along with acrylamide and epichlorohydrin, which enter water during the treatment process.
Officials did not release potential new limits on those compounds, though in a proposal posted on the EPA’s website, the agency suggested it could feasibly reduce the amount of TCE in water to one-tenth of current levels.
Environmentalists have raised alarms that new batches of contaminants, such as discarded pharmaceuticals, were getting into drinking water without regulation.
Groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council expressed cautious optimism Monday that new procedures could bring federal limits on such contaminants more quickly.
Reviewing compounds in groups is “obviously a more effective and efficient way of going after drinking water contaminants,” said Mae Wu, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on water issues.
