The Environmental Protection Agency’s warning drinking water in the country’s private water supplies is not good enough and is putting people’s health at risk.
In its latest Drinking Water Quality report for 2019, the watchdog says more than 100 private supplies failed to meet bacterial standards.
1 million people get their drinking water from a private supply, and many more drink water from small private suppliers like hotels and schools.
Senior water inspector at the EPA, Dr Michelle Minihan says local authorities need to do more to improve the water quality, noting “20 group water schemes failed the standard required for bacteria in drinking water and 88 small private supplies failed that standard, now that means that there’s over 100 private water supplies that contained bacteria and there’s a particular serious form of ecoli called VTEC which causes very severe illness in some people that’s why these failures in water quality are so concerning to the EPA”.
The full report can be viewed here
