WASHINGTON, DC — This year, residents of Midland, Texas sued Dow Chemical for dangerous levels of hexavalent chromium in their drinking water. Chromium-6 is a cancer-causing chemical made infamous by Julia Roberts’ film, ‘Erin Brockovich.’ There are currently no drinking water standards for chromium-6, and the chemical industry is delaying a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assessment labeling it a potent carcinogen.

This is far from an isolated scenario, threats to the public drinking water supply are national in scope. From the 1950s to the 1980s, trichloroethylene, a carcinogenic metal degreaser, lurked, undetected, in the drinking water at North Carolina’s Fort Lejeune — affecting up to one million marines and their families.

California’s San Joaquin River and San Francisco Bay Delta are contaminated with selenium and mercury.

Atrazine, an agricultural weedkiller, frequently pollutes groundwater across the Midwest corn-belt.

Las Vegas tap water contains radium.

Across Florida, pesticides taint a public water system serving nearly 10 million people.

And in the Northeast, millions living along New York’s Hudson River and New Jersey’s Passaic River struggle with the industrial legacy of toxic PCB and dioxin pollution.

Americans overwhelmingly want such problems solved. Safe drinking water was of serious concern to 84 percent of respondents in a recent Gallup […]