The Natural Resources Defense Council released a report Tuesday on states with the most drinking water violations. And, Wisconsin was on the list.
States were ranked most at risk from over 100 contaminants, including toxic chemicals, bacteria and metals such as lead. The data was drawn from EPA records collected throughout 2015.
The report broke out the the top dozen states with the most offenses, based on population. Texas came in at number one. Wisconsin was ranked eleventh worst.
“Our review of EPA data found that nearly 77 million Americans are served community water systems that have violations. That represent about one-in-four Americans,” the Council's health program director Erik Olson said. “We also found that 27 million people are served by systems that had health-based violations. Those are the worse violations that we know of. These are situations where it’s confirmed that there is, for example, too much arsenic or that they haven’t treated their water to take care of lead contamination to deal with microbial risks.”
The international nonprofit environmental organization points to concerns of cuts proposed by the Trump Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees safe drinking water regulations.
