NWEA sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Thursday over its 2010 approval of Idaho’s water quality standards for arsenic. The levels approved by EPA are up to 1,000 times more than EPA has determined are safe for people to consume through eating fish and drinking water. The complaint can be found here.
Idaho had chosen to use EPA’s standards from the Safe Drinking Water Act instead of EPA’s recommendations under the Clean Water Act, resulting in this significant different in human health protection. The difference is this: the Safe Drinking Water Act factors in the cost of treatment to generate acceptable pollution levels in drinking water. In addition, that law does not evaluate the impacts on human health from eating contaminated fish.
Not only is arsenic dangerous to nearly every human function, EPA’s recommended levels are currently being reassessed because growing evidence demonstrates greater hazards from arsenic than were previously thought.
EPA has allowed many other states to use the Safe Drinking Water Act levels for Clean Water Act purposes, despite its own policy against it. Now Washington State is poised to adopt the same unsafe level for arsenic in its new water quality standards for human health.