The Rural Water industry takes this seriously and is in the process of reviewing the report.  It appears the report primarily focuses on large metropolitan areas that obtain their water from surface water sources.  The majority of systems in the nation, 94%, serve less than 10,000 population and 60% of those serve populations of 1,000 or less.  These systems primarily use ground water sources and are affected at a much lesser degree.  We are fortunate that in this country we have the technology to detect these types of products in ultra small amounts of parts per trillion or the equivalent of one second in 32,000 years.  Being able to detect these types of compounds at the onset will allow for the development of water and wastewater treatment processes for the future.   Meeting these future demands will require major infrastructure funding.  The Rural Utilities Service which funds the majority of water and wastewater treatment plants for small communities and rural areas has a backlog of applications totaling $2.5 billion and another $1.5 billion of pre-applications on file.     
       Members of the National Rural Water Association and their customers can be certain that NRWA will work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further the scientific analysis and knowledge of these compounds in our nation’s water.  NRWA shares the goal of our rural water family of sound science that will protect the consumers of our nation’s drinking water as well as the environment from which we draw our drinking water.   We are very serious about protecting our nation’s water.  For the last Fifteen years, NRWA and its state associations have been the nation’s leader in protecting our nation’s sources of water assisting over assisting 9,958 communities in assessing their environments and putting in place local source water and wellhead protection plans.
        The public should rest assured that their drinking water is the safest in the world and is continually tested to meet the quality control parameters of the Safe Drinking Water Act.  If those parameters are exceeded the consumer is notified and corrective action is taken.    
 

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