The Regulatory Development & Compliance
Program offers technical support for public water systems (PWSs),
manages all data pertaining to PWSs and reports all non-compliant PWSs
to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. There are
three principal sections that exist in the RD&C unit:
Regulatory
Development - Gives guidance,
overall direction and support to the Data Management and Compliance
& Enforcement Sections. This section also develops and
modifies regulations as required.
Data Management -
enters all data into a specialized database called SDWIS (Safe
Drinking Water Information System). Each PWS monitors/samples their
water for various chemicals and contaminants that has the potential to
be a public health risk. Some chemical/contaminants that systems
test for are chlorine, turbidity, total Coliform, arsenic, nitrate,
nitrite, just to name a few.
Compliance
& Enforcement - determines whether a PWS is in
compliance with all state rules and federal regulations pertaining to
the Safe Drinking Water Act. Such determination is based on
results of the chemical/contaminant monitoring required for each PWS.
If a system is out of compliance, a violation is then issued requiring
the PWS to do public notification activities to inform the public that
here was a problem, what happened, and what they are doing to fix
it.
National Drinking water standards can be found on the
EPA's Ground
Water and Drinking Water homepage.
