When will the water industry shape up to protect public health? When will utility officials realize that lax water-treatment procedures and a reluctance to upgrade facilities can result in illness? How many more customers must die from waterborne diseases before utilities put the health of the public before the health of their own balance sheets?

For the past 17 years, I have been trying to make the industry understand these concerns. I have chaired the water committee of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, and have represented consumers on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's first negotiated rule-making on disinfectants and disinfection by-products. And having worked for consumers in dozens of cases, I am continually appalled by the priorities of many in the industry. What's not to like?

* I don't like people getting sick, even dying, from drinking water. From 1971 to 1994, there were 449 outbreaks of waterborne diseases in the US, or one outbreak every 11 days on average. Dozens of deaths and thousands of illnesses resulted. Last summer, a waterborne outbreak of e. coli caused at least six deaths in Walkerton, Ontario.

SILENCE. Many of these outbreaks could have been prevented. In Walkerton, town officials knew e. coli had been detected, but they failed to notify health officials–or the people in town–for a week. That week could have made all the difference, maybe even saved some lives.

* I don't like state and local governments crying that they don't have enough money to take care of their water systems. Earlier this year, the Washington, D.C.-based Water Infrastructure Network (WIN) issued a report calling on the federal government to spend billions of dollars on local water utilities because state and local governments can't afford to keep the systems running. But WIN fails to tell an important part of the story. According to a Wall Street Journal article last June, state and local governments are running unprecedented surpluses, amounting to $51 billion in 1999 and projected to be $60 billion this year.

I have a simple suggestion for the cities, towns and private developers that provide water service: If you don't want to be in this business, get out.

There are plenty of folks around who would love to own or operate your water system. Get professional leadership, make some tough decisions, maintain and upgrade your facilities and spend the necessary capital. Or get out of the business and bring in someone who wants to do it right. Believe me, I don't have much faith in mammoth utilities, but I have even less faith in smaller utilities that neglect essential services and refuse to protect their communities.

* I don't like policy makers ignoring the needs of millions of low-income Americans. You wouldn't know it from reading the financial pages, but there are millions of Americans who can't put enough food on the table and still afford to see a doctor. A recent US Census Bureau study found that more than 20 million Americans were living in poverty in 1999. Yet our policy makers and water utilities often pretend that these people don't exist.

POOR POLICY. This summer, US EPA published a proposed regulation for arsenic, paying lip service to the needs of low-income Americans. Many people can't afford to pay an extra $100 or $200 per year for water, and certainly not without proof of a real public health benefit. My analysis of the proposed rule shows that there would be at least 1.2 million people living in poverty whose water bills each would increase by more than $100 per year. Other analyses show that the health benefits of lowering the arsenic standard as much as EPA proposes would be nearly nonexistent.

Still, EPA wants our poorest citizens to spend money they don't have to achieve health benefits that don't exist. Yet, EPA claims that its proposal would have no impact on the affordability of water service because the median-income household could afford the cost of the rule. When will EPA and other policy makers realize that "median income" means that half the people are getting by on less? When will policy makers become sensitive to the trade-offs that low-income households must make that affect their health?

A report released last summer by the Iowa Dept. of Human Rights documented the tradeoffs that low-income families must make in order to pay for their utility bills. The bottom line: People go without food, medicine and medical care so they can pay their utility bills. When we ask low-income families to spend more money on drinking water, we directly harm their health. Are we making sure that the new arsenic regulation provides health benefits of a similar magnitude?

* Finally, I don't like being misled. Have the decency to tell us the truth. Tell us that you need to spend a lot of money to replace pipes that are 50 or 100 years old and failing. We can understand that; we know that nothing lasts forever. Tell us that the water isn't perfectly safe–nothing is–but you're working to make it better. And if you don't believe that the cost of a new regulation or construction project is worthwhile, be truthful with us and yourself–and have the guts to change it.

Scott J. Rubin is an attorney and consultant in Selinsgrove, Pa.,
who works exclusively on issues concerning public utilities.
He may be e-mailed at scott@publicutilityhome.com..