The SDWA was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on
December 16, 1974. This program regulates "at
the faucet" contaminants and the delivery of water by
public water systems. It also requires those water
systems to develop source water protection programs to identify and
assess the risks of contamination upstream "at the
source."
But the SDWA does not, by itself, protect
our water supplies. In
fact, 2014 proved how complex and precarious
that protection is. A chemical spill in West Virginia
last January threatened the water supply of hundreds of
thousands of citizens and sent the company responsible for the
spill into bankruptcy. Abundant algal growth in Lake
Erie contaminated Toledo, Ohio's water supply with
algal toxins. The SDWA did not prevent the ultimate causes of
those problems.
