Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years, edited by Council member Manny Teodoro, offers a forward looking assessment of how the nation’s foundational drinking water law must evolve fifty years after its passage. The book brings together leading researchers and water sector leaders, including Council members Chad Seidel, Kathryn Sorensen, Alan Roberson, and former Chair Robert Renner, to examine how drinking water policy and governance must adapt to meet the challenges ahead. At the center of the volume is the Madison Declaration, developed in recognition of the Safe Drinking Water Act’s fiftieth anniversary, which calls for a national commitment to strong governance, institutional capacity, and public trust alongside technical solutions. Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years is available now as a free, open-access download.
The Future of Drinking Water in America
Fifty years ago, President Gerald Ford signed the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the principal law regulating tap water quality in the United States. The SDWA was an inflection point: for the first time, the nation’s water systems were subject to binding health-based standards, rooted in scientific research and jointly administered by federal and state authorities. Bolstered by amendments in 1986 and 1996, the SDWA propelled significant advances. Today, thanks to the SDWA, drinking water is safer, water utilities are more professional and accountable, and Americans enjoy some of the world’s best tap water.
Challenges remain, however. Millions of Americans still face significant risk from unreliable or contaminated drinking water. Microbial and chemical contaminants still threaten public health in parts of the country. Aging infrastructure and persistent failures erode public health and public trust. Our communities deserve better.
The Challenges
A REGULATORY TREADMILL
The SDWA’s framework drives a continuous search for and subsequent regulation of contaminants. Initial SDWA implementation focused on the most harmful contaminants, leading to marked improvements in health over its first three decades. However, a regulatory regime that prioritizes identifying and regulating new contaminants over eliminating known risks and maintaining health gains can only do so by imposing ever-greater costs for ever-smaller advances in public health. Vigilance is important, but advancing public health requires a focus on the most serious problems.
Resources:
MISSING RISKS
Today America’s most pressing drinking water challenges include aging and failing infrastructure, unsafe premise plumbing, a lack of access, workforce shortages, cybersecurity, and a burgeoning bottled water industry that siphons billions of dollars from the nation’s least affluent. New, unknown challenges are sure to arise in the decades ahead. Existing policy frameworks have proven inadequate to address these and other emerging dangers.
Resources:
UNDERINVESTMENT
Elected officials too often are unwilling to invest adequately in their facilities and organizations, prioritizing low rates at the expense of health and environmental quality. When facing the consequences of chronic underinvestment, many advocate for the federal taxpayer to rescue failing water systems. But federal funding is unreliable, vulnerable to manipulation by politicians, pits water against other national priorities, and creates perverse disincentives for locally led investment.
Resources:
INJUSTICE
Drinking water safety, reliability, and affordability are not uniform across the United States. America’s fragmented water sector is unsustainable, with tens of thousands of utilities operating nearly 50,000 community water systems, plus 100,000 non-community systems. Most of these lack the technical, managerial, and financial capacity to operate effectively and affordably. Systems that serve rural, lower-income, and racial/ethnic minority communities are disproportionately likely to experience contaminated drinking water. Regulators have been too slow to enforce the SDWA and too tolerant of ongoing failures.
Resources:
OPACITY
The American public poorly understands tap water quality, water system infrastructure, and the organizations that operate, regulate, and govern water. SDWA-mandated Consumer Confidence Reports fail to improve public knowledge and may even reduce public trust in high-quality water systems. This information vacuum invites fearmongering and exploitation.
Resources:
The Next 50 Years
PRIORITIZING RISK
Regulatory regimes must center on the most serious threats to drinking water. Utilities must build and maintain resilient infrastructure that prevents contamination and take measures to protect source water. Policymakers must weigh regulation of novel contaminants against these priorities and emerging concerns. Rules that compel communities to invest limited resources must be guided by the best available science on risks and achieve the greatest benefits.
Resources:
BUILDING CAPACITY
Great drinking water requires great organizations. Investments in human capital must accompany investments in infrastructure. Water utilities need sustainable funding through service rates and other local sources. Although federal funding can be a useful complement in some cases, we reject simplistic calls for the federal taxpayer to pay for America’s drinking water systems.
America’s drinking water systems must consolidate. We cannot deliver safe, reliable, resilient, and affordable water through tens of thousands of tiny, unsustainable organizations. Congress recognized this reality when it passed the SDWA in 1974. Water sector leaders repeated the call for consolidation on the SDWA’s 25th Anniversary in 1999. We take up this call with renewed urgency and specific targets: America should consolidate into fewer than 6,500 utilities—through physical and/or organizational mergers—with a minimum size of 20,000 customer connections.
Resources:
RIGOROUS ENFORCEMENT
Regulators can no longer tolerate failure. Authorities must anticipate and prevent systems at risk of failure, and respond to serious or ongoing violations of the SDWA’s health protections with swift and effective enforcement. We must level the regulatory field so that SDWA protections and enforcement apply to all public, private, and nonprofit water systems. Commercial drinking water sources, including bottled water and vending machines, must meet the standards, protocols, and reporting requirements that apply to community water systems.
JUSTICE
Rulemaking, enforcement, investment, and pricing must foster safe, reliable, resilient, and affordable tap water for all. We must eliminate racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in tap water access, quality, and reliability. As American society and economy evolve, drinking water regulation also must evolve to protect vulnerable populations.
Resources:
TRANSPARENCY & TRUST
Utilities and regulators must lavishly share information about drinking water in clear and understandable terms. We must replace ineffective and antiquated Consumer Confidence Report rules with more effective, rigorously tested methods of communication.
Resources:
Towards more perfect drinking water
The nation has taken great strides to ensure safe drinking water for all, but there is more work to be done. The challenges ahead are principally organizational, financial, and political; we can overcome those challenges with prudent, visionary leadership. With appreciation for past accomplishments and confidence in the promise of future achievements, we celebrate this 50th anniversary of the SDWA and dedicate ourselves to ensuring that its 100th anniversary will be a triumph.
Safe Drinking Water Act Insights
SDWA Video Series: Manny Teodoro
The 50th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act presents an opportunity to pause, reflect, and envision a brighter future. Council Member Manny Teodoro goes in-depth about the broad concepts featured in the recently released book, Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years. Over these five videos, he discusses the importance of the SDWA, environmental justice in drinking water backed up by a real world example, water system consolidation, and the benefits of America’s tap water.
SDWA Video Series: Kathryn Sorensen
To celebrate the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) 50th Anniversary and the recently released book, Council member Kathryn Sorensen gives her meaningful insights on today’s drinking water sector. Kathryn highlights that while the SDWA has been a huge success over the past 50 years, it also can be extremely inflexible. The drinking water risks we encounter today are quite different from those in the past. It is crucial that we prioritize risks that pose the most significant threat to public health so that we can deliver safe, clean, and reliable drinking water for all. She also goes on to highlight the desperate need to upgrade aging water infrastructure and adapt consumer confidence reports. The vision for the next fifty years of drinking water requires prioritizing risks and systematic changes.
SDWA 50 Video Series: Joe Cotruvo
For the third video in our Safe Drinking Water Act (the Act) 50th Anniversary Campaign series, Council Member Joe Cotruvo, the former Director of the Drinking Water Standards Division at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), discusses top the three priorities for the next 25 years of drinking water regulations. Joe began at the EPA around the same time that the Act was passed, and shares valuable insights into the historical context and evolution of water regulations.
SDWA Video Series: Alan Roberson
Council Member Alan Roberson addresses a series of key questions related to drinking water enforcement in this SWDA short-form video series. These informational videos are based on the newly released book, Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years, which explores the vision for drinking water over the next fifty years, aging water infrastructure, consumer confidence reports, and the need to prioritize relative risks in drinking water.
SDWA Video Series: Chad Seidel
Council Member Chad Seidel addresses a series of key questions related to risk-based drinking water management in this SDWA short-form video series. These informational videos are based on the newly released book, Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years, which explores how drinking water systems can better prioritize public health risks, strengthen infrastructure resilience, address emerging challenges such as Legionella and Legionnaires’ disease, and ensure safe, affordable, and reliable water for communities across the United States.
SDWA 50 Video Series: Janet Anderson
Council Member Janet Anderson addresses a series of key questions related to risk-based drinking water regulation in this SDWA short-form video series. These informational videos are based on the newly released book, Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years, which explores the future of drinking water policy, the importance of prioritizing public health risks, emerging contaminants such as PFAS, and the need to balance scientific uncertainty, resource allocation, and infrastructure investment.
The Future of Drinking Water in America
Fifty years ago, President Gerald Ford signed the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the principal law regulating tap water quality in the United States. The SDWA was an inflection point: for the first time, the nation’s water systems were subject to binding health-based standards, rooted in scientific research and jointly administered by federal and state authorities. Bolstered by amendments in 1986 and 1996, the SDWA propelled significant advances. Today, thanks to the SDWA, drinking water is safer, water utilities are more professional and accountable, and Americans enjoy some of the world’s best tap water.
Challenges remain, however. Millions of Americans still face significant risk from unreliable or contaminated drinking water. Microbial and chemical contaminants still threaten public health in parts of the country. Aging infrastructure and persistent failures erode public health and public trust. Our communities deserve better.
The Challenges
A REGULATORY TREADMILL
The SDWA’s framework drives a continuous search for and subsequent regulation of contaminants. Initial SDWA implementation focused on the most harmful contaminants, leading to marked improvements in health over its first three decades. However, a regulatory regime that prioritizes identifying and regulating new contaminants over eliminating known risks and maintaining health gains can only do so by imposing ever-greater costs for ever-smaller advances in public health. Vigilance is important, but advancing public health requires a focus on the most serious problems.
MISSING RISKS
Today America’s most pressing drinking water challenges include aging and failing infrastructure, unsafe premise plumbing, a lack of access, workforce shortages, cybersecurity, and a burgeoning bottled water industry that siphons billions of dollars from the nation’s least affluent. New, unknown challenges are sure to arise in the decades ahead. Existing policy frameworks have proven inadequate to address these and other emerging dangers.
UNDERINVESTMENT
Elected officials too often are unwilling to invest adequately in their facilities and organizations, prioritizing low rates at the expense of health and environmental quality. When facing the consequences of chronic underinvestment, many advocate for the federal taxpayer to rescue failing water systems. But federal funding is unreliable, vulnerable to manipulation by politicians, pits water against other national priorities, and creates perverse disincentives for locally led investment.
INJUSTICE
Drinking water safety, reliability, and affordability are not uniform across the United States. America’s fragmented water sector is unsustainable, with tens of thousands of utilities operating nearly 50,000 community water systems, plus 100,000 non-community systems. Most of these lack the technical, managerial, and financial capacity to operate effectively and affordably. Systems that serve rural, lower-income, and racial/ethnic minority communities are disproportionately likely to experience contaminated drinking water. Regulators have been too slow to enforce the SDWA and too tolerant of ongoing failures.
OPACITY
The American public poorly understands tap water quality, water system infrastructure, and the organizations that operate, regulate, and govern water. SDWA-mandated Consumer Confidence Reports fail to improve public knowledge and may even reduce public trust in high-quality water systems. This information vacuum invites fearmongering and exploitation.
These challenges demand a strategic shift in the decades ahead.
A vision for the next 50 years
To deliver on the promise of safe tap water for every American, we envision:
PRIORITIZING RISK
Regulatory regimes must center on the most serious threats to drinking water. Utilities must build and maintain resilient infrastructure that prevents contamination and take measures to protect source water. Policymakers must weigh regulation of novel contaminants against these priorities and emerging concerns. Rules that compel communities to invest limited resources must be guided by the best available science on risks and achieve the greatest benefits.
BUILDING CAPACITY
Great drinking water requires great organizations. Investments in human capital must accompany investments in infrastructure. Water utilities need sustainable funding through service rates and other local sources. Although federal funding can be a useful complement in some cases, we reject simplistic calls for the federal taxpayer to pay for America’s drinking water systems.
America’s drinking water systems must consolidate. We cannot deliver safe, reliable, resilient, and affordable water through tens of thousands of tiny, unsustainable organizations. Congress recognized this reality when it passed the SDWA in 1974. Water sector leaders repeated the call for consolidation on the SDWA’s 25th Anniversary in 1999. We take up this call with renewed urgency and specific targets: America should consolidate into fewer than 6,500 utilities—through physical and/or organizational mergers—with a minimum size of 20,000 customer connections.
RIGOROUS ENFORCEMENT
Regulators can no longer tolerate failure. Authorities must anticipate and prevent systems at risk of failure, and respond to serious or ongoing violations of the SDWA’s health protections with swift and effective enforcement. We must level the regulatory field so that SDWA protections and enforcement apply to all public, private, and nonprofit water systems. Commercial drinking water sources, including bottled water and vending machines, must meet the standards, protocols, and reporting requirements that apply to community water systems.
JUSTICE
Rulemaking, enforcement, investment, and pricing must foster safe, reliable, resilient, and affordable tap water for all. We must eliminate racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in tap water access, quality, and reliability. As American society and economy evolve, drinking water regulation also must evolve to protect vulnerable populations.
TRANSPARENCY & TRUST
Utilities and regulators must lavishly share information about drinking water in clear and understandable terms. We must replace ineffective and antiquated Consumer Confidence Report rules with more effective, rigorously tested methods of communication.
Toward more perfect drinking water
The nation has taken great strides to ensure safe drinking water for all, but there is more work to be done. The challenges ahead are principally organizational, financial, and political; we can overcome those challenges with prudent, visionary leadership. With appreciation for past accomplishments and confidence in the promise of future achievements, we celebrate this 50th anniversary of the SDWA and dedicate ourselves to ensuring that its 100th anniversary will be a triumph.