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Federal prosecutors, environmental officials and state regulators are investigating several water utilities across the country to see if criminal or environmental laws have been broken misrepresenting the lead levels in the drinking water. The U.S. attorney in New York has begun investigating if the city''s water agency committed a federal crime or violated a court order by concealing test results signaling unsafe lead levels in the drinking water of nine million New Yorkers.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently reviewing the validity of lead testing reports across the country, and the EPA and state regulators are investigating if utilities should be ordered to take immediate steps to protect public health, including in New York City, Detroit, Portland and some northern New Jersey communities.
After The Washington Post published a report a week earlier finding several dozen water systems manipulated test results for lead and violated federal rules, the investigations were launched. Water quality experts, health officials and environmentalists met for two days in Washington, concluding October 13 the EPA must clarify and change some of its regulations for monitoring the nation''s drinking water.
According to The Post, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to report more than 300 lead test results from 2000 to the present, which utilities are required to report to regulators. If received, the city''s water would not have received permissible levels of safety in at least two of the past three years in 2001 and 2002. Despite this, the city agency continued to assure the public that the city water was safe to drink, but had the water provider alerted its customers to the lead health risks, millions of dollars would have needed to be spent in order to reduce levels of contamination.
Prosecuting drinking water officials is not common, though it is a felony to conceal information or give false statement to a federal agency or official. The New York City agency is required to now turn over all unreported data to the EPA so that the federal agency can determine if violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act occurred.
Some experts agree a more clear lead and copper rule must first be established because of the way some water quality rules conflict with one another.
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