Summary
For Public Comment -- Deadline April 2, 2004
Summary
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (the Department) is seeking input and requesting comments regarding several approaches to address the occurrence of unregulated organic contaminants in New Jersey's drinking water. While the intent is to devise a program to address all drinking water sources in the state, many of the options described herein focus on ground water systems. For those options, ground water systems would be the first addressed, followed by surface water and mixed source water systems.
The concept arose after numerous internal and external discussions regarding the best options for protecting public health in response to the results of a number of studies conducted in New Jersey showing the occurrence of unregulated contaminants in groundwater, surface water and finished drinking water (1,2,3). Most of the unregulated semi-volatile and non-volatile organic contaminants found are not part of the suite of contaminants routinely analyzed for as part of the drinking water program. Some appear on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) Contaminant Candidate List and some are target analytes (though not regulated contaminants) detectable using routine analytical methods. Human health information is lacking for many of the contaminants, so it is difficult to assess whether they pose a threat to human health either on an individual basis or as contaminant mixtures. Given this uncertainty, the Department is considering several options to address the occurrence of these contaminants in the state's drinking water. Through these options, the Department seeks to address the question of what, in the absence of information on human health information on these contaminants, its response should be to this new information. In order to solicit public input as early as possible, the Department has prepared this discussion paper to generate dialogue on the issue. This paper describes: the results of recent studies showing the presence of unregulated and tentatively identified compounds in New Jersey groundwater, surface water and finished drinking water; the current federal and state approach to setting standards for drinking, water contaminants; the current federal and state approach to addressing, the occurrence of unregulated contaminants; and the various options for discussion regarding the issue of unregulated contaminants in drinking water in New Jersey.
Several options have been introduced for consideration. They include: classifying contaminants by their health endpoint, such as carcinogenicity, and regulating these carcinogens at a uniform level, such as the "no detect" level; classifying contaminants by their chemical characteristics and regulating the chemical groups as generic classes; investigating the potential presence of unregulated contaminants through more thorough and intense scrutiny of contaminated sites; expanding the current approaches to addressing unregulated contaminants to include and accommodate the larger number being detected; and providing more broad-based water treatment such as granular activated carbon in addition to existing treatment on contaminated water supplies, or on supplies potentially subject to contamination.
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