One-fourth of Americans drink water from systems that don’t meet standards

Across the country, water systems are old, badly maintained, and in dire need of modernizing—from lead service lines in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Newark, New Jersey, to silt and debris in drinking water after heavy rain in Austin, Texas, to fecal contamination in Penn Township, Pennsylvania. An analysis by my organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), showed that almost all of Puerto Rico’s residents in 2015 got their water from systems that violated the Safe Drinking Water Act and nearly 70 percent of them got their tap water from sources contaminated with coliform bacteria, disinfection by-products, and more. NRDC looked at the data on drinking water from New York State’s public schools.

Source: www.nationalgeographic.com