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Steve Chapman (back
to story)
September 8, 2001 Whose water is it, anyway? San Ysidro, N.M.,
is a rural hamlet of just a couple of hundred people, at the edge of
the Jemez Mountains about 40 miles northwest of Albuquerque. It has
what sounds like a nightmarish problem: arsenic in its drinking water.
Now, people in San Ysidro are no fonder than anyone else of ingesting
hazardous substances. They've spent large sums of money to reduce the
amount of arsenic they encounter, going so far as to install
individual filters in every home. Even with this treatment, which has
pushed individual water bills to a minimum of $44 per month, the water
still has small amounts of arsenic.
There is nothing to stop the locals from electing to pay even more
to make their water cleaner still. Unfortunately, it would be hugely
expensive, and it's not at all certain that it would increase their
life expectancy, improve their health or brighten their smiles. The
people of San Ysidro have decided that arsenic is not their biggest
concern.
But never mind what they want. If the Environmental Protection
Agency and environmental lobby groups have their way, this town, and
thousands of others, will have to go to far greater lengths to solve a
problem that doesn't strike residents as especially urgent.
President Bush got into political trouble earlier this year by
rolling back an EPA rule, issued in the final days of the Clinton
administration, that would have drastically reduced the amount of
arsenic allowed in drinking water -- though the administration
promises some tightening of the standard. Critics accused him of
jeopardizing public health, ignoring scientific evidence, caving in to
polluters and selling his soul to the devil.
What no one bothered to ask is: Why should Washington tell
individual communities they must devote their resources to getting rid
of arsenic instead of addressing more important problems?
Opponents of the stricter standard have plenty of science on their
side. A study by the National Academy of Sciences, which recommended
setting a lower limit, admitted that a change might not improve public
health. Though arsenic is clearly toxic at higher levels, the report
noted, "No human studies of sufficient power or scope have
examined whether consumption of arsenic in drinking water at the
current (allowable level) results in the incidence of cancer or
noncancer effects."
A report by the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies
found that the expense would vastly exceed the potential benefit. It
also reached the startling conclusion that the regulation might kill
more people than it would save. "The costs of complying with the
rule," the report says, "reduce the amount of private
resources that people have to spend on a wide range of activities,
including health care, children's education and automobile safety.
When people have fewer resources, they spend less to reduce
risks."
In San Ysidro, this is not just a theoretical possibility. The town
has a devil of a time just meeting the existing standard of 50 parts
per billion. As for the 10 ppb limit proposed by the EPA, civil
engineer Richard Burton, a consultant to the town on water issues,
says flatly, "There is no currently available way to get down to
that standard."
Its residents already pay nearly twice what most other people in
New Mexico pay for water. If the rule were imposed, Burton says small
water systems would simply close down, leaving residents to fend for
themselves. Some people would drill their own wells to obtain water --
which, unlike the water they currently get, would not undergo any
treatment to remove arsenic. "Everybody will get more
arsenic," says Burton. Others will resort to buying bottled water
in large quantities.
Either of these options would leave locals worse off. How do we
know that? Because they already have those options, and they've chosen
to get their water from the village water system.
It's not just San Ysidro's problem. A study in the scholarly
journal New Mexico Geology estimated that under the tighter standard,
New Mexico residents served by small water systems with arsenic
problems would see their water bills jump by $90 a month. A typical
family would end up spending 2 percent of its entire income on water.
Maybe this would be a wise investment, but I doubt it. And my
opinion, or the Sierra Club's, shouldn't matter anyway. It's a
question that people in San Ysidro and every other small town in the
country can decide on their own.
If a town in New Mexico spews out pollution that ends up in Texas,
Washington ought to stop it. But if the people of the town choose not
to entirely eliminate a pollutant that they are fully aware of and
affects only them, that's their business. When it comes to arsenic in
the drinking water of San Ysidro, what the federal government should
do is simple: nothing. |