Ohio Senate must act fast to protect drinking water

Before and during the water crises earlier this year in Flint, Mich., and nearby Sebring Village, timing was everything.

In both communities, confusion, ineptitude and callousness toward public health coalesced to create inexcusable delays in notifying community residents of dangerously high levels of lead in their drinking water. As a result of such foot-dragging, men, women and children were exposed to potentially harmful health risks.

Today, once again, timing is everything to ensure adequate safeguards become the letter of the law in Ohio. As such, we join the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the Ohio Environmental Council and other advocates of pure drinking water in strongly urging the Ohio Senate to review and adopt House Bill 512. The senior legislative chamber should act with all due speed, most certainly before the Legislature adjourns for its extended summer recess later this month.

To its credit, the Ohio House of Representatives acted with speed uncharacteristic of the General Assembly. It took only one month for the bill to make its rounds in the Statehouse from introduction to final unanimous passage last week.

It’s easy to understand why. The bill provides commonsensical safeguards to avert the senselessness that pervaded the water emergency in Sebring last winter.

The village that services 8,000 water customers in western Mahoning County became a metaphor of failure from both local and state governments in warning residents about unsafe drinking water in a timely fashion.

Although tests last summer showed that the water in Sebring could be contaminated with lead, the local water system did not tell customers until the Ohio EPA forced it to do so in January. According to records, the Ohio EPA knew about the contamination as early as October but also failed to warn village water users.

Statewide, 10 of 14 water systems in Ohio that had advisories for lead contamination in effect in recent months had not properly notified people that their drinking water was tainted, a review of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency records showed.

CURRENT SYSTEM IS BROKEN

Clearly, the system of adequate and timely notification of fouled drinking water supplies has been broken for eons. House Bill 512 offers clear-cut and immediately applicable fixes. Among them:

The bill requires the public to be notified within two days of confirmation of high levels of lead being found in a municipal water systems, and a more detailed follow-up within 30 days. That compares to the current 30-day initial notice and 60-day follow-up period.

Laboratories that serve water systems would have to finish tests within 30 days and provide results to operators and the EPA within two business days.

Absent local action within the new time lines, the state would have statutory responsibility to step in and provide notice, with potential administrative penalties for the noncompliant local systems.

The legislation would set the definition of “lead free” in new construction plumbing to 0.25 percent, down markedly from the current 8 percent.

Despite those and many other assets, some believe the legislation should be strengthened. One of those advocates is state Rep. John Boccieri of Poland, D-59th, in whose district the Sebring water crisis unfolded. Boccieri sought to add provisions to provide a clear definition in state code of public health crisis, to specify how public notification of lead contamination could be made and to allow agencies to plan in advance to respond to lead contamination issues, among other changes.

Boccieri’s recommendations sound solid, but they will require more time for further discussion and vetting. Unfortunately, time is not on the side of legislators as a three- to five-month summer recess looms. We’d suggest Boccieri revisit the provisions this fall.

For now, however, it is critical that these most-basic protections are adopted and signed into law. In their present form, the OEC says the reforms will make Ohio a national leader in protecting people from lead-tainted water. If followed properly, the new rules will work to lessen anxieties and to heighten public safety for all state residents.

At all costs, efforts to dilute HB 512 by widening the two-day notification window must be scuttled. We therefore join the environmental council in urging residents to let their state senators know that Ohio needs these taut safe-water protections, and it needs them now.