Eric Oswald, director of the Drinking Water and Environmental Health Division of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, speaks to attendees of the Great Lakes Drinking Water Conference on Sept. 25, 2024. | Kyle Davidson
As Wednesday marked the 50th Anniversary of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, state and national environmental officials met in Novi to discuss the past and future of drinking water protections and how Michigan can continue to address threats to our water.
Eric Oswald, director of the Drinking Water and Environmental Health Division of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) told attendees of the Great Lakes Drinking Water Conference that while drinking water regulation had previously been sporadic and stemmed from diseases like cholera spreading through drinking water systems, the Safe Drinking Water Act marked a huge step for drinking water regulations nationally, establishing maximum contaminant levels and setting monitoring requirements.
Michiganders define themselves by their water, EGLE Director Phil Roos said, with the Great Lakes holding 21% of the world’s fresh surface water and residents enjoying abundant access to groundwater.
Phil Roos, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy speaks to attendees of the Great Lakes Drinking Water Conference on Sept. 25, 2024. | Kyle Davidson
“We have thousands of miles of rivers, 11,000 lakes, all of that, and it’s all so fragile, so precious, and something we got to protect. We’re here to talk about the drinking water part of that, but it’s interchangeable with those water resources that we have that are the reason we have the abundant clean drinking water that we have in this state,” Roos said.
In the 50 years since the Safe Drinking Water Act was established, Congress and the States have continued to raise the bar to face emerging challenges, but without those federal requirements to test, monitor and maintain water quality, communities would face much greater risks from contamination and pollution than we see today, Roos said.
And while recent years have seen Michigan leading the nation in replacing lead service lines, Roos noted the state had been brought into that position while navigating the Flint Water Crisis and lead contamination in Benton Harbor.
“There’s a lot to be proud of, after some really big, enormous challenges, we have — in Benton Harbor, in Flint, in Detroit and across the state — we have some of the cleanest drinking water in the country, in the world,” Roos said.
Alongside replacing lead lines, Michigan has also made large strides on rebuilding sewer systems, upgrading septic systems and addressing other aspects of water infrastructure, Roos said.
With systems that are 50, sometimes 100 years old, Roos said it’s been challenging to raise water rates enough to update those systems. However, for the first time, funding from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s administration as well as the State Budget for Fiscal Year 2024 has allowed EGLE to finally invest into water infrastructure, Roos said.
“There’s not a higher priority than drinking water, safe drinking water, water infrastructure improvements that is at the top of our budget list every single year, and it will be in this coming year,” Roos said.
However the gap between available funds and the department’s needs remains large, Roos said.
“In our State Revolving Fund, we had about $750 million that we had available that we could allocate to water infrastructure projects, drinking water and also just water resources, wastewater treatment plants, storm water and so forth and we had $3.5 billion in asks,” Roos said.
While that $3.5 billion need remains, it has received over a billion dollars in federal dollars that it is allocating to fill the gaps, with Roos saying EGLE would continue to do all it can at the state level to leverage federal funds.
“We’re all taxpayers here, we can also look at why this makes sense in dollars and cents. For every million dollars investment in water infrastructure creates 15 jobs, for every dollar it creates $6 in economic benefits. That’s a pretty darn good return,” Roos said.
“Most of our focus, as it rightly should be, is on public health, but it’s also economic health. And it’s just protecting our way of life. It’s part of our culture, it’s everything that we depend upon. And we couldn’t be doing this at the level we are without our federal partners,” Roos said.
Alongside efforts to improve Michigan’s water infrastructure, Roos noted changes to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Lead and Copper Rule are also on the horizon, meaning the state will need to accelerate its efforts to remove lead lines.
“Luckily, in Michigan, we had higher standards…. But it’s going to be more communities that may be close to being out of compliance or out of compliance that we’re going to have to work with, and we’re going to have to help them make the investments they need to to be in compliance,” Roos said.
As Michigan continues to face down other challenges like emerging contaminants and microplastics, EGLE has a plan to raise the bar, which it calls “Vision 2027.”
“We’ve set this Vision 2027, which is to make Michigan clearly an enduring national leader in environmental protection by the end of this administration, 2027. Good news is we’re already there in a number of areas,” Roos said.
The department worked with a consultant to identify 15 to 20 metrics looking at the impacts on air, land, water and climate that were comparable across the state. As EGLE works to set benchmarks in areas across all of its program areas, its plan is to see improvement on 75% of those goals each year.
“We’re not going to do it on everything, because sometimes we’re going to have the wrong goals. The point is to just keep having continuous improvement every year. Look at where we’re at, revise the goals, figure out where we can invest in the right areas where we can really make a big difference,” Roos said.
Alongside addressing concerns like PFAS, emerging contaminants, microplastics and combined sewer overflows, Roos and Oswald identified cybersecurity as another area for improvement.
There’s been a lot of effort at the federal level, including a directive from the EPA asking states to revise and report back on their cybersecurity plans, Roos told the Advance.
While he’s not aware of any major events in Michigan, Roos said officials overseeing water systems have to think about the unknowns and examine their systems regularly for potential threats.
“We’ve got to have the level of assurance where it doesn’t even enter into citizens mind and they can go about living their lives free of worry,
I think we’re there generally, but you know, you hear little incidents popping up around the country so far, nothing, nothing that’s too big of an issue or inconvenience,” Roos said.
When addressing PFAS officials also need to begin looking at the source so it doesn’t get into water systems to begin with, Roos said.
However the state has strong protocols for identifying and investigating the source and mitigating known contaminants that have been released, Roos said, noting that EGLE has an industrial pretreatment program where wastewater treatment facilities require waste from potential polluters to be pretreated.
“Sounds like a simple thing, but in the areas where we have had contamination in the past. We’re reducing 98, 99% of PFAS,” Roos said.
Mae Wu, the deputy assistant director for Water at the EPA speaks to attendees of the Great Lakes Drinking Water Conference on Sept. 25, 2024. | Kyle Davidson
While speaking at the conference Mae Wu, the deputy assistant director for Water at the EPA identified Michigan as a leader in addressing PFAS.
However when it comes to things like microplastics where less is known about them, more research and development is needed, Roos said, as well as an inventory to assess the extent of the issue. While EGLE has received some funding to begin doing basic research and planning to address microplastics, it’s still heavily reliant on the EPA to fund and work toward solutions for emerging issues.