12.15.09

Group gives M.U.D.'s water low score

The Omaha utility says it exceeds all federal and state requirements for safe water
By: Joe Ruff, Omaha World-Herald

A national environmental organization has ranked Omaha’s Metropolitan Utilities District near the bottom of big-city utilities for the quality of its drinking water, but M.U.D. officials said the group misinterpreted key information.

The Environmental Working Group ranked M.U.D. 94th out of 100 water utilities serving populations greater than 250,000. The top-ranked utility was in Arlington, Texas, and the worst was in Pensacola, Fla.

The biggest problem wasn’t with M.U.D.’s performance but with hard-to-clean polluted water entering the system, said Richard Wiles, senior vice president for policy and communications at the Washington, D.C.-based group

No one using M.U.D. water is likely to suffer an immediate illness, he said.

“We’re saying there is a higher level of contaminants compared to other water systems,” Wiles said.
M.U.D. officials said that many of the Environmental Working Group’s numbers for arsenic, nitrates, nitrites and other contaminants didn’t match the numbers the utility has found in its testing of water as it reaches the public.

Some of the group’s numbers appeared to come from data gathered at wells and other water sources before the water was treated for public consumption, said Joel Christensen, vice president of water operations.

M.U.D. said it exceeds every federal and state requirement for safe drinking water and shares its testing information with the public annually through a water quality report.

The Environmental Working Group said it obtained its data from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

Jack Daniel, who monitors the state’s drinking water for the department, said he couldn’t immediately comment on the report.

The state sent a lot of information to the Environmental Working Group, including sample tests from wells and other points within the distribution system, Daniel said.

“Their request of us was broad and inclusive,” he said.

Wiles said the Environmental Working Group stands behind its report.

Christensen also said the group reported that M.U.D. exceeded the legal limit for manganese, but there is no maximum contamination level for that mineral.

Too much manganese can stain faucets and other water fixtures black, but M.U.D.’s water doesn’t reach that level, Christensen said.

“It’s an aesthetic issue,” he said.

The nonprofit research and advocacy group, which released the ranking last week, acknowledged that manganese is a “secondary standard” set by the Environmental Protection Agency to help utilities manage non-health-related water qualities like taste, color and odor.

Wiles said manganese played an insignificant role in M.U.D.’s overall rating.

The group said it ranked utilities using three factors: total number of chemicals detected since 2004; percentage of chemicals found among those that were tested for; and the highest average level of each pollutant compared with legal limits for regulated contaminants or national averages for nonregulated contaminants.

The Environmental Working Group said the pollutants it found nationwide usually didn’t violate legal standards, but they often came in combinations that raised questions about the long-term safety of drinking water.

M.U.D. has said that it has had only one violation of federal drinking water safety standards, in December 2000, involving the disinfection process at the Florence plant. The water was disinfected later and no emergency was declared, M.U.D. said.

The Environmental Working Group said it analyzed 20 million tap water quality tests performed by water utilities between 2004 and 2009. A total of 316 contaminants were found in water delivered to the public, the group said.

The EPA, however, has set enforceable standards for only 114 of the pollutants, the group said.

Christensen said the EPA might not set enforceable standards for some contaminants for several reasons, including a determination that they were not prevalent enough or there were no known health effects associated with them.

M.U.D. spokeswoman Mari Matulka said the utility did not plan any further protests of the report.

“It’s a group that did its own survey. We are regulated by the federal government and that’s what we stand by.”

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