Utah may be arid, but there's no shortage of regulators ensuring the state's scarce water is drinkable.

An army of monitors on federal, state and local levels hound each other for compliance to countless regulations. The overlapping oversight system churns out thousands of mandatory tests and reports each year on the condition of Utah's drinking water in the largest cities and tiniest towns."At times it seems excessive, but there is a rational reason behind it," said Ken Bousfield, compliance manager for the state Division of Drinking Water. "When you think about it, water is a universal food source, and if something is in it, a large percentage of people could get sick."

The testing process is spelled out in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, which is being reauthorized by Congress this year. The law requires the nation's 60,000 water systems to test for more than 80 contaminants. And if state regulators don't do their job, the federal government will.

That happened two years in Utah, when the state division was unable to keep up with the exhaustive testing regimen and the EPA threatened to yank its federal funding. The EPA issued press releases alerting the public that 250 Utah water systems violated federal drinking water standards.

That caught the attention of the Utah Legislature, which boosted the division's budget, and the state is gradually catching up. This division, which operates on a $1.7 million annual operating budget involving state and federal dollars, undergoes its midyear EPA check-up this month.

"We will fare pretty well," Bousfield predicted. "We are making some inroads and heading in the right direction."

But testing and audits don't always ensure the drinking water is pure.

Occasionally a tiny parasite slips through the screen of redundant tests, as it did in Milwaukee last year. Thousands were sickened by the protozoan cryptosporidium, which invaded the city's water system when water managers there used a cheap treatment chemical, which obviously didn't work.

In the past six months, Utah water cops have issued 166 notices of violation to managers of more than 900 water systems throughout the state. The majority dealt with procedural matters, such as a missed test caused by an inadvertent slip-up at a local water department, Bousfield noted.

But 20 notices dealt with water quality, where the water managers have repeatedly ignored notices of missing monthly tests, prompting the state to conclude a water quality problem exists.

A worst case example is the Bear Lake community of Laketown. After town officials had some work done on the well that supplies residents' water, a September test showed bacterial contamination. The town never performed the follow-up tests to confirm the negative finding.

But Laketown Mayor McKay Willis said he wasn't aware of the testing requirement. "The Logan health department does our testing. I rely on them," he said, noting no one has fallen ill and residents are consuming chlorine-treated water until the contamination is removed.

Bousfield wasn't surprised by the response. He said small communities are his biggest problem because of communication glitches and lack of funding and personnel to conduct the tests.

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But the state is limited in what it can do. "We just deal with papers and pencils trying to create pressure to solve the problems," he said. "It's the local community that has to take action."

The next step with Laketown will be an administrative order requiring Willis to issue residents notices of the water contamination and to submit follow-up tests with the state. If that doesn't happen, the town will get a letter from the attorney general explaining that if Laketown doesn't get in line, it could find itself in court.

"That usually gets results," Bousfield said.

But most of the state's water systems, from a large municipality to a small campground, do comply with the law. The state is honoring several of them this week as part of the National Drinking Water Week. The division gave its annual Operation and Maintenance Achieve-ment awards to Enterprise Estates, Hill Air Force Base, Silver Springs Water Co., Snowbird resort and the city of Ogden.

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