Is Contaminated Drinking Water a Big Problem in Arkansas?
The answer is no. Arkansas has one of the best records in the nation when it comes to complying with provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. In Arkansas, we generally complete all of the required tests during the compliance period – and we generally don’t see that much evidence of contamination with pesticides or industrial chemicals. Approximately 55,000 tests for individual pesticides, 58,000 tests for individual volatile organic chemicals, 38,000 tests for individual synthetic organic chemicals, and 934 tests for nitrates were conducted from the community, non-transient non-community, water systems in Arkansas during 1995. Although trace amounts of chemicals were found in some systems, none of the water systems exceeded federal Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL) for pesticides, nitrates, or synthetic organic chemicals. Only one non-transient non-community water system exceeded MCL for one of the volatile organic chemicals. In Arkansas, you can be very confident that the water comin
