1 STAFF REPORT
DATE: August 23, 2022
TO: Justin Hess, City Manager
FROM: Dawn Lindell, General Manager, Burbank Water and Power VIA: Richard Wilson, Assistant General Manager, Water Systems BY: Javier Martinez, Manager Water Production and Operations
SUBJECT: Review of Public Health Goals Report for Calendar Years 2019, 2020, and 2021
RECOMMENDATION
Note and file.
BACKGROUND
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was passed by Congress in 1974 to protect our drinking water. Under the SDWA, the Unite d States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) sets the standards for drinking water quality and monitors states, local authorities, and water suppliers who enforce those standards. In 1966, The Calderon- Sher Safe Drinking Water Act required the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to set standards for levels of contaminants in drinking water. In 2015, that responsibility was transferred from CDPH to the State Water Resources Control Board, Division of Drinking Water (DDW). The act also requires the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to develop Public Health Goals (PHGs) for contaminants in California’s publicly supplied drinking water.
The PHG report must be completed every three years and is based on the drinking water quality data c ollected in the calendar years 2019, 2020, and 2021. This data was summarized in Burbank Water and Power (BWP) Currents, “Annual Water Quality Report,” and was mailed to all our customers in June of the respective years as required.
The Public Health Goals Report is provided in Attachment 2.
WATER AND
POWER
2 DISCUSSION
PHGs address both carcinogenic (cancer -causing) and non- carcinogenic health risks.
The goals are set by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and represent the concentration of a contaminant in drinking water below which there is no significant health risk to the public if consumed for an entire lifetime.
• The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment identified 95 contaminants and assigned a PHG for each.
• PHG’s are set without regard to the economic impact and/or the available technology to measure or attain those levels.
• Water purveyors must identify any drinking water contaminants that exceed a PHG and identify contaminants that exceed their respective USEPA maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) for which a PHG has not been set (MCLGs are the federal equivalent to California’s PHGs).
• Concentrations for gross alpha particle activity, uranium, gross beta particle activity, total coliform, and bromate in BWP’s potable water exceeded either PHGs or MCLGs.
• Compliance with a PHG is not a regulatory requirement but a goal. Water purveyors should strive to meet it if feasible to do so. • A maximum contaminant level (MCL) is the legal threshold on the amount of a contaminant allowed in public drinking water systems under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). There were no exceedances of the legal limits for Burbank’s drinking water.
Information regarding the detections noted above are summarized in tabular form in Attachment 1.
FISCAL IMPACT
No programs are proposed for reducing the above PHG/MCLG exceedances since all contaminant test results were less than their respective MCLs.
CONCLUSION
Potable water provided by BWP meets all state and federal water quality standards set to protect public health. Additional costly treatment processes would be required to reduce contaminant levels identified in this report to below their respective PHG or MCLG.
The contaminant levels are already significantly below their respective MCLs. These further hypothetical reductions ’ health protection benefits are unclear and may not be quantifiable. Therefore, no action is proposed.
3 ATTACHMENTS
Attachment 1 – Summary Table
Attachment 2 – 2019-2021 PHG Report
Correspondences