Safe Drinking Water Act

Overview

Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. represents a wide cross-section of entities regulated under  the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), including drinking water utilities, industry associations, industrial and commercial entities that qualify as non-community public water suppliers, and companies engaged in underground injection.

In the area of drinking water standards (MCLs) and the regulation of drinking water quality, the Firm has played a significant role with respect to statutory and regulatory developments under the SDWA.  Because drinking water MCLs play a central role in RCRA corrective action and CERCLA remedial requirements, our experience in the drinking water area has also benefited clients served by our hazardous waste practice.

Full Description

Beveridge & Diamond represents a wide cross-section of entities regulated under  the Safe Drinking Water Act, including drinking water utilities, industry associations, industrial and commercial entities that qualify as non-community public water suppliers, and companies engaged in underground injection.

With respect to drinking water utilities and large non-community public water suppliers, our representation embraces compliance, enforcement defense in administrative and judicial contexts, and the negotiation of administrative consent orders, consent decrees and “no action” assurances from regulatory authorities.

Related to this, we draw upon experience in matters related to human health risk and exposure to advocate reasonable and protective measures for inclusion in National Primary Drinking Water Regulations and in the adoption of Maximum Contaminate Levels (MCLs) associated with drinking water standards.  This includes stakeholder participation in proposed rulemakings, preparation of technical and scientific comments on feasibility and risk, and litigation challenging unreasonable, infeasible or ill-conceived NPDWRs and MCLs.

Because MCLs for drinking water contaminants play a significant role in the corrective action requirements of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and remedial requirements of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund), our experience in the drinking water area has also assisted us in our representation of clients served by our CERCLA and hazardous waste practice.

In addition, we recently relied upon our experience under the SDWA in defending a putative nationwide class action alleging contamination of water supplies by one or more signature products manufactured by our client. Using our knowledge of the statutory scheme, we determined that the named plaintiffs had suffered no injury under law and, thus, were without standing. Both the federal District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed, dismissing a major class action lawsuit in its entirety.