News Releases - 2003

Report Shows Most Illinois Public Water Supplies Delivering Drinking Water That Meets Health Standards

Springfield, Ill. -- During calendar year 2002, more than 10.6 million persons in Illinois, or 93 percent of the people served by Illinois community water supplies regulated by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, received drinking water that met all state and federal health requirements-that is, it did not exceed limits on contaminants, violated no treatment requirements and complied with all health advisories that had been in place for three years or more.

As in previous years, most non-compliance was brief in duration, minimizing risks to public health.

The figure represents 1,644 community water supplies, or 90 percent of the IEPA supervised supplies in Illinois, and is a 4 percent increase over compliance figures from calendar year 1995, when publication of annual compliance reports was first required from all states by U.S. EPA.

"The Illinois EPA's goal is for every public water supply system to provide water that is consistently safe to drink, and these most recent figures show we continue to make progress toward that goal," said IEPA Director Renee Cipriano.

In Illinois, oversight of water supplies falls either under the jurisdiction of the Illinois EPA or the Illinois Department of Public Health. The IEPA regulates all community water supplies that serve 25 or more year round residents. The IDPH oversees supplies that serve transient or non-residential users such as campgrounds, highway rest areas, schools and factories, and private wells. The two agencies regulate a total of 5,693 water systems, with 1,820 of them classified as public water supplies under IEPA jurisdiction. Private wells have no mandatory testing requirements.

Drinking water furnished by public water supplies is regulated to be free of contamination that has the potential to cause either short-term or long-term health effects. In 2002, more than 98.4 percent of the population served by community water supplies received water meeting all acute (short term) health requirements and more than 94.6 percent received water meeting chronic (long term consumption) health requirements.

Supplies that have microbial problems (bacterial contamination or non-compliance with regulations for cloudiness or turbidity) are required to issue boil orders and supplies that exceed maximum allowable amounts of nitrates are required to provided bottled water to users with infants six months and under, until levels are consistently well below the permitted maximums.

The information was included in a yearly report that Illinois, like other states, is required to submit by July 1 of each year to U.S. EPA.

Most violations involve federal and state allowable maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs. For lead and copper, compliance is determined by an "action level" that requires 90 percent of the samples collected in consumers' homes to meet the action level. Lead contamination almost always is caused by lead in household plumbing systems, and is not present in the community's water supply when it is delivered to homes. In communities where lead is likely to be present in household plumbing, the water supply is required to treat the water to make it less likely to leach lead when it is present.

Failure to monitor for any regulated contaminant, or to make required public notice as required, are violations in themselves.

In most cases, when contaminant levels exceed MCLs, non-compliance is a short term situation because treatment is quickly adjusted once a violation is identified, and most supplies quickly return to the required ranges.

Copies of the summary or complete annual water system compliance reports can be obtained by contacting the Illinois EPA's Division of Public Water Supplies, #13, P.O. Box 19276, Springfield, IL 62794-9276, (phone) 217-782-1020, or on the Agency's website at www.epa.state.il.us/water/compliance/drinking-water.