ABSTRACT
Public Law 104-182, the US Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments of 1996, was in several respects a landmark bill, whose enactment began what could be described as the start of a new generation of environmental laws. The old, 1986 SDWA was inflexible, did not take a holistic view of the resource, and did not include a federal fmancial share toward system needs. Particularly for small systems, the biggest concern with the 1986 law and indeed the original 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act was that they contained absolutely no provisions to recognize that many small systems lack the economies of scale to afford the same kinds of costly treatment used by larger systems. In every region of the US, they have demonstrated their potential to solve difficult supply conflicts within the constraints of existing systems of water rights and independence of individual water systems.
