Friday, July 14, 2006

Safer Drinking Water For Well Users

A House bill, HB 2873, that requires North Carolina counties to inspect and test private wells passed the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday and will have a full Senate vote early next week. The bill would require counties to set up an inspection program and send test samples to the state public health lab for review for 17 different elements and compounds, as well as for bacteria and acidity. About 2.7 million state residents rely on well water, but only a third of the counties actually have some kind of plan in place to oversee well construction or well testing. The bill applies primarily to new wells. The Environmental Management Commission already inspects large wells used by community water systems that serve large housing developments and some municipalities.

The Emergency Drinking Water Fund, which I initially proposed in HB 2186, which eventually became part of the budget, but was subsequently pulled on the final vote, has been included in SB 1587,which was approved by the House on second reading yesterday. This would provide the guidelines for the money that was allocated in the budget ($300,000) for notice and funding for alternative drinking water for the 2.7 million North Carolinians drinking from well water near known contaminated hot spots.

1 comment:

meblogin said...

I live in 27407. How do I easily have my well water tested.
thanks