AWWA JAW46118

The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) maintains information on drinking water utility compliance with Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulations. This national database of public water system (PWS) information, originally developed in response the the SDWA of 1974, was initially known as the Federal Reporting Data System (FRDS). Its purpose was to gather information on PWS compliance with SDWA requirements regarding monitoring, reporting, and maximum contaminant levels. Compliance data from utilities were submitted annually by primacy agencies; in 1985, USEPA required data to be reported quarterly. Amendments to the SDWA and related federal regulations increased demands on primacy agencies to gather information on their state's drinking water quality. In response to these reporting demands and to concerns about the quality of the data within FRDS, USEPA decided to modernize FRDS to address the shortcomings of the system and to better satisfy the needs of primacy agencies. This article discusses those changes.