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American drinking water could soon get a lot dirtier

The Trump administration wants to roll back federal checks and reviews of waterways. But experts say that might put the nation's drinking water at risk.

  • The Trump administration's new infrastructure plan aims to ease regulatory checks on US waterways.
  • The administration says this will help fast-track more building projects and reduce permit delays.
  • But some water experts are worried that it could put some of the country's most fragile drinking water systems at risk, and put the expensive burden of water cleanup onto cities.

A new plan to speed up the way the US government does business related to federal waters may leave some cities footing a bigger bill for clean drinking water.

The White House on Monday released its new infrastructure plan, which calls for "protecting clean water with greater efficiency."

In the plan the Trump administration outlines proposals for how to reduce the number of federal agencies that need to sign off on permits for dumping "dredged or fill material" into the nation's waterways. Such sites include fisheries, wetlands, and tap-water supplies. If the plan gets the green light, it will undo the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to veto building permits that affect US waterways, and cut back on environmental reviews.

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The Trump administration said that allowing the US Army Corps of Engineers to push more projects forward without input from the EPA would help "eliminate duplication of work and streamline permit decisions."

But that deregulation could quite literally dump a huge additional burden of waste onto municipal water systems around the US. Water experts are worried that the change could make it easier for local water sources to get contaminated with runoff or pollution from new highways, dams, and pipelines. And some areas of the country are already ill-prepared to deliver clean drinking water, new research suggests.

According to a study of more than three decades of the nation's tap-water records, also released Monday, some of the country's smaller water utilities are already struggling with the chore of keeping tap water clean. Roughly 16 million Americans are exposed to stomach bugs from drinking water coming out of their faucets each year. Some also get exposed to cancer and neurological disorders, the study authors wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That's especially true in rural pockets of the country, notably some spots in Texas, Idaho, and Oklahoma, where EPA drinking-water standards have been violated year after year.

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"Generally, the country's utilities deliver high-quality water, but every year, about 7% to 8% of community systems do not meet health-related standards,"

Allaire isn't the only one sounding the alarm.

Virginia Tech civil engineering professor Marc Edwards, who was one of the first to identify the problems with high levels of lead in the water in Flint, Michigan, said there was cause for concern. He told Business Insider earlier this year that a lot of water around the country lacks cleaning agents that

This "

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But there's a chance that less federal regulation and oversight could lead to more contamination, especially if the EPA (the agency tasked with regulating clean drinking water) is no longer involved in deciding who gets approval to dump, build, or dredge in federal waters that feed municipal taps.

In that case, communities would have to deal with dirtier water coming into their treatment plants. And the trouble that some spots around the country are having when it comes to delivering contaminate-free water could get worse.

""Someone must pay the clean-up costs. Either the entities that are sources of pollution must clean up, or communities downstream must bear the additional costs of water treatment."

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