Congressional Briefing to Take Place on Water Quality From Public Supply Wells

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) along with cosponsors, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and the Water Environment Federation (WEF), invite you to a briefing on the quality of water from public supply wells in the United States. At this briefing, the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program will release new information on the prevalence of naturally occurring and man-made contaminants in public wells around the country. This assessment is particularly significant because more than a third of the nation’s population depends on drinking water from public water systems that rely on groundwater pumped from public wells.

In this USGS study, water quality conditions were assessed in untreated water from 932 public wells, and in untreated and treated water from a subset of 94 public wells. Water samples were analyzed for as many as 337 contaminants.

Speakers for this event include:
• Patricia Toccalino, USGS hydrologist and lead study scientist, will describe contaminant occurrence in public wells nationwide, levels of potential human health concern, and implications for drinking water protection strategies and policies;
• Karen Burow, USGS hydrologist will explain naturally occurring contamination of public wells in the San Joaquin Valley of California;
• Nick Pinhey, director of utility planning and projects for the city of Modesto, Calif., will explain how Modesto used USGS information to manage contamination problems in its drinking water supplies; and
• Michael Shapiro, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), deputy assistant administrator for water, will describe how USGS scientific information and EPA regulations work together to protect public drinking water.

This briefing is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is requested. Visit www.eesi.org for more details.

Source: WEF