Just because the levels of contaminants in Reno water are legal
doesn’t mean they’re healthy. That’s the gist of a
new report by Environmental Working Group. For years,
Reno residents have been told they drink some of the best water
in the nation. So they were thrown into a justifiable tizzy when the
nonprofit group’s report said that not only was Truckee
Meadows water not the best, it was among the worst.
Out of 100 cities with populations above 250,000, Reno was listed as
fifth worst in the nation, ahead only of Riverside County, Calif., Las
Vegas, Riverside, Calif., and Pensacola, Fla. The rankings were based
on data from state and local water utilities’ own consumer
confidence reports.
The Truckee Meadows Water Authority held a press
conference last week to dispute the report.
“The fact is that Reno and Las Vegas drinking water meets and
is significantly better than federal Environmental Protection
Agency’s water standards,” said Allen Biaggi of
the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources,
which oversees the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection,
the agency responsible for Nevada’s safe drinking water
program.
So the nonprofit group says Reno is among the worst; the water
authority maintains we’re among the best. It’s possible
they could both be right, but based on different standards.
The EWG report said water utilities “are noted as exceeding
the legal limit if any test [emphasis added] is above the
maximum contaminant level (MCL). Most MCLs are based on annual
averages, so exceeding the MCL for one test does not necessarily
indicate that the system is out of compliance.” This could
explain the discrepancy between TMWA’s findings and those of the
EWG. The TMWA report lists MCLs as an average, not just as found
on one test. For instance, the average levels of cancer-causing
arsenic, the solvent tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and the
metal manganese were below the legal limits of 10 parts per
billion (ppb), 5 ppb and 50 ppb, respectively. However, maximum
levels found for those contaminants were above legal limits: a maximum
of 24 ppb was detected for arsenic, 15.1 ppb for PCE and a whopping 130
ppb for manganese.
TMWA stated it has never received any health-based violations from
the EPA or the state of Nevada. But the EWG report wasn’t about
whether water utilities were in legal violation. Of the 316 pollutants
the EWG analyzed in American tap water, more than half aren’t
subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in
any amount. So it’s possible for Reno to be legally compliant but
still rank low.
Richard Wiles, senior vice president for policy at EWG, said
Reno’s ranking was due not to legal violations, but a combination
of how many contaminants we had, how many of those pollutants were
approaching legal limits, and how toxic those contaminants were,
arsenic in particular. “You guys are two-and-a-half times the
national average for the number of contaminants found,” said
Wiles. And where most cities had an average of four contaminants above
health guideline levels, Reno had eight.
“EWG’s criticism amounts to saying federal water quality
requirements are not adequate,” said Biaggi. “It’s
like saying driving 25 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone is too
fast.”
That is exactly what EWG is saying. The group’s report is
intended to call attention to the need for tougher drinking water
standards nationwide.
“If you have a safe amount of arsenic and a safe amount of
alpha radiation and a safe amount of radium—is that safe?”
said Wiles. “We’re not even asking that question. Is it
safe to drink 21 contaminants, supposedly at safe levels? Maybe, but we
just assume that it is, and that’s not a smart thing to do. We
are saying federal standards are not adequate.”
TMWA noted a link on EWG’s website that shows the group
receives a portion of proceeds from water filtration devices bought
through Amazon.com. Wiles said
the same would be true “if you bought a tractor” from
Amazon, which has similar arrangements with many nonprofits whose
readers link to Amazon from their website. If there is a conflict of
interest, it still doesn’t fully discredit why, in a list of
firsts, lasts and in-betweens, Reno would rank so low.
Read the EWG report at www.ewg.org/tap-water/home,
and TMWA’s annual water quality report at www.tmh20.com.