Council member Kathryn Sorensen recently joined The Water Entrepreneur podcast to discuss the future of drinking water policy and the newly released book Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years. In the conversation, Sorensen explains the book’s connection to the Madison Declaration, which calls for a renewed national approach to drinking water governance as the Safe Drinking Water Act enters its second half century.
Reflecting on the success of the Safe Drinking Water Act, Sorensen notes that the law has been extremely effective at regulating the most dangerous contaminants and improving drinking water quality across the country. However, there are very serious risks of ending up on a regulatory treadmill. Constantly chasing the next contaminant steals attention from other drinking water priorities which require immediate attention. She emphasizes that several challenges are of equal importance, if not more, to the long-term safety and reliability of drinking water systems.
According to Sorensen, the three greatest risks facing drinking water systems today are aging infrastructure, a shortage of skilled workforce, and supply chain resilience. Addressing these issues will require sustained investment and long-term planning to ensure we are proactively managing current drinking water challenges. At the same time, local utilities must navigate the political difficulty of raising water rates. While “everyone is quite emotional about water rates,” drinking water out of the tap will always be the most affordable and sustainable option, so increasing water rates is sometimes necessary to guarantee safe drinking water to our homes. Although, this issue mainly falls on rural water systems with minimal resources, so outside investments are still necessary to help uplift communities.
As a contributor to Manny Teodoro’s new book, Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years, Sorensen highlights the need for the water sector to pivot now so that people a century from today can look back and say the right decisions were made. The Safe Drinking Water Act remains one of the most successful pieces of public health legislation in U.S. history, dramatically improving drinking water quality across the country. But the risks facing water systems today are not the same as those present when the law was first written. The book encourages policymakers and water leaders to preserve what has worked while adapting governance and priorities to address emerging challenges and ensure safe, reliable drinking water for generations to come.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Read the open access book: Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years