Is Santa Fe tap water safe to drink right out of the faucet?

Jane Robinson thought so until she read news reports recently saying that four years ago, some contaminants in the city's water exceeded health guidelines. "I was really surprised," Robinson said. "I always thought that water coming from the mountains is so good and so pure. Now I'm not sure what to think."

She started using her Brita filter, just to play it safe.

Eric Perramond, a professor at Colorado College who's lived in Santa Fe seven months, wasn't worried about drinking the city's municipal water after reading the same articles. "I laughed the whole thing off and reached for another cold one from the tap," he wrote in an e-mail. Perramond said he prefers tap water to bottled water.

The stories Robinson and Perramond read were about a drinking-water report released last fall by the Environmental Working Group. The report analyzed water-quality test data from thousands of drinking-water systems and found tap water in many areas polluted with chemical contaminants that, while they don't violate legal standards, raise questions about long-term safety. People in many communities around the country, including Santa Fe, became concerned.

Worried residents called Brian K. Snyder, director of Santa Fe's water division, to ask if their tap water is safe. He sent a letter to city water customers defending the municipal water's safety. "We have never had any violation of any kind in the water system, not chronic or acute," Snyder said.

Dennis McQuillan, an environmental geologist for the New Mexico Environment Department, agrees that the city's water is safe. He said he's raised two children on Santa Fe tap water. "If I thought there was a problem, as a consumer and a ratepayer, I would say something," he said. "But Santa Fe has some of the best water in the United States."

A closer look at the EWG report

The EWG compiled water-quality test data from 47,667 drinking-water systems in the U.S. from 2004 through 2006. The findings for Santa Fe's system were based on 4,700 samples collected by city staff between 2004 and 2007.

The EWG found that at various times Santa Fe, like many systems, exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's legal limits or health guidelines for contaminants. Legal limits are the enforceable federal standards drinking-water systems must meet. Health guidelines are unenforceable limits the EPA sets as goals to better protect health, but which may be technically or financially difficult to meet.

Based on Santa Fe's own sampling data, the EWG report found that once during a three-year period, the city's drinking water contained six chemicals that exceeded legal limits. They included arsenic, thallium, copper and haloacetic acids (disinfection byproducts).

The city's water also exceeded health guidelines in several tests for 19 contaminants in the same three-year period. Among those contaminants were disinfection byproducts, and combined uranium and radioactive alpha particles.

The report notes a water system can still be in compliance with legal drinking-water regulations if a contaminant standard is exceeded once in a year.

Determining risk

Overall, water systems were more likely to exceed health limits than the legal standards because the health limit, or "goal," for a contaminant is often zero. Combined uranium, arsenic and alpha particles all have zero health limits, and all occur naturally in Santa Fe's water.

McQuillan said a zero contaminant level is unrealistic and would be exorbitantly expensive to accomplish. "That is not fair, really," he said, adding, "Any detectable amount of radium, for example, is an exceedance (of the health limit)."

McQuillan said he thinks the risk of getting cancer or any other health problem from drinking Santa Fe water is far less than from other sources. "We live in a dangerous world," he said. "When you start comparing the risk of drinking Santa Fe water to other risks, there's really no comparison."

Stephen Wiman, owner of the Good Water Company in Santa Fe, said some people think the EPA's legal limits for contaminants are based on politics, not science, which makes them wonder if the limits protect health in the long run. "That's the crux of the argument against EPA standards, is how we got them in the first place," Wiman said.

Contamination sources

Drinking water can be contaminated in a variety of ways.

Robinson might have thought the city's water was "clean and pure" because a portion of it comes from reservoirs in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains east of the city. But mountain water can contain minerals, bacteria or waterborne parasites that have to be cleaned up by the city's water-treatment plant to meet federal standards.

The surface water also is mixed with water from the city's wells, which must be treated to reduce levels of arsenic, uranium and radium that leach naturally from rock.

Copper and lead leach into water out of old pipes. Broken pipelines or septic systems near wells allow nitrates and coliform bacteria into drinking water.

McQuillan said any uranium or radium detected in Santa Fe's water currently is coming from natural sources leaching into the city's Buckman Wells near the Rio Grande and not from Los Alamos National Laboratory upriver. But residents are concerned about radioactive waste from the lab reaching their drinking water through the Buckman Direct Diversion project, which will send Rio Grande water into the city's system next year.

The joint city/county Buckman Direct Diversion board is working with the lab to establish an early warning system that will allow project managers to shut down river diversions if radioactive waste is found in water coming through Los Alamos canyons. The board also has hired an independent chemical assessment company to review all water sampling data from LANL and determine the health risks to Santa Fe water customers.

Tightening standards

The list of contaminants regulated under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act is updated every five years. When the EPA adds a contaminant or tightens the standards, it costs city water managers money to meet the new requirements.

In 2006, for example, the EPA reduced the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water from 50 micrograms per liter to 10 micrograms. Santa Fe has a lot of naturally occurring arsenic in its water and received an extension until 2009 to meet the new standard.

The city's biggest arsenic problems are in the 14 deep-water wells in the Buckman well field. Currently, the city dilutes the well water with water from other sources to meet the arsenic standards. Snyder said the city is evaluating different methods for removing arsenic from the well water. The estimated price tag for treating the water is now $8 million, with additional costs to dispose of arsenic removed from the water.

The city tests for more than 80 contaminants regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EWG report found more than 150 contaminants in drinking water around the United States that have known or suspected health impacts but are unregulated by the federal or state governments, such as perchlorate, a chemical compound used in rocket fuel and fireworks. McQuillan said perchlorate needs to be federally regulated.

Santa Fe does not have problems with perchlorate, but it has been found in groundwater in Los Alamos, White Sands, Alamogordo and Gallup.

Pharmaceuticals are another concern in drinking water and should be studied, he said. "We need to determine at what levels these chemicals become dangerous," McQuillan said.

Keeping it clean

Snyder and the water division staff oversee one surface-water treatment plant with another coming online next year, 22 wells, nine potable-water storage tanks, 2,600 fire hydrants and more than 610 miles of pipes serving 32,500 customers.

Santa Fe's water division is proactive, said Robert Gallegos, the city's environmental protection specialist. It finished a study recently of haloacetic acids in the drinking-water system and is proposing to double the number of monitoring sites.

The city also works with the EPA on updating contaminant standards, Gallegos said.

But it has to consider the bottom line where customers are concerned.

"City water managers and city officials are required to keep track of the ever-changing and increasingly stringent water-quality standards and new treatment technologies while balancing the associated costs paid by the water ratepayers," Snyder said. "As water-quality standards change, it is our responsibility to maintain the water quality within the standards at a reasonable cost to the water ratepayer."

So, does Snyder drink city water unfiltered? "Yes. I fill my water bottle at work throughout the day from an unfiltered water fountain," he said.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.


WATER ON THE WEB

• To see the Environmental Working Group report: www.ewg.org.

• To see current or historical city water test data, go to the New Mexico Environment Department Drinking Water Division Web site at https://eidea.nmenv.state.nm.us/SDWIS/ and type in Santa Fe.

• Want to know more about the EPA standards and drinking water? Visit their consumer information site at www.epa.gov/safewater/consumerinformation/index.html

Editor's note: This ran originally on Santafenewmexican.com on Jan. 30, 2010 and is being run again on the homepage as a service to those who missed it on the weekend.