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OVA-POLLUTION IN THE POTOMAC: EGG-BEARING

MALE BASS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMAN

AND ECOLOGICAL HEALTH

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

OCTOBER 4, 2006

Serial No. 109–186

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

BENJAMIN CHANCE, Clerk

MICHAEL GALINDO, Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 4, 2006 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Grumbles, Benjamin, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water,

Environmental Protection Agency; Mark Myers, Director, U.S. Geological Survey; Susan Haseltine, Associate Director of Biology, U.S. Biological Survey; and Gregory Masson, Chief, Branch of Environmental Contaminants, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service .................................................. 16

Grumbles, Benjamin ................................................................................. 16

Myers, Mark .............................................................................................. 29

Murray, Charles, general manager, Fairfax Water; Andrew D. Brunhart,

Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission; Thomas Jacobus, general

manager, Washington Aqueduct; Joseph Hoffman, executive director,

Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin; Ed Merrifield,

executive director/riverkeeper, Potomac Riverkeeper, Inc.; and Erik

Olson, director of advocacy, Natural Resources Defense Council ............. 56

Brunhart, Andrew D. ................................................................................ 61

Hoffman, Joseph ........................................................................................ 90

Jacobus, Thomas ....................................................................................... 84

Merrifield, Ed ............................................................................................ 101

Murray, Charles ........................................................................................ 56

Olson, Erik ................................................................................................. 107

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Brunhart, Andrew D., Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 63

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 9

Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Virginia, prepared statement of ................................................................... 3

Grumbles, Benjamin, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water,

Environmental Protection Agency, prepared statement of ........................ 19

Hoffman, Joseph, executive director, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, prepared statement of ..................................................... 92

Jacobus, Thomas, general manager, Washington Aqueduct, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 86

Merrifield, Ed, executive director/riverkeeper, Potomac Riverkeeper, Inc.,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 103

Murray, Charles, general manager, Fairfax Water, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 59

Myers, Mark, Director, U.S. Geological Survey, prepared statement of ...... 31

Olson, Erik, director of advocacy, Natural Resources Defense Council,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 110

Ruppersberger, Hon. C.A. Dutch, a Representative in Congress from the

State of Maryland, prepared statement of .................................................. 13

(1)

OVA-POLLUTION IN THE POTOMAC: EGGBEARING MALE BASS AND IMPLICATIONS

FOR HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL HEALTH

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:05 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman

of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Cummings, Van Hollen,

and Ruppersberger.

Also present: Representatives Gilchrest and Moran.

Staff present: David Marin, staff director; Larry Halloran, deputy

staff director; Keith Ausbrook, chief counsel; A. Brooke Bennett,

counsel; Michael Galindo and Benjamin Chance, clerks; Ali Ahmad,

staff assistant; Phil Barnett, minority staff director/chief counsel;

Robin Appleberry, Krista Boyd, and Alexandra Teitz, minority

counsels; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Good afternoon, and welcome to this oversight hearing on egg-bearing male fish in the Potomac River. Recent Washington Post stories on this topic have spawned a great

deal of interest, and justifiable concern, about the implications of

this odd phenomenon for the environment, for the fish and for us.

Today we will hear from those who watch over what goes into,

and what comes out of, our vital regional waterway, the Potomac

River.

First, let us understand just how far and wide the Potomac

reaches. If you look at the green line on this map, you will see that

the river runs from West Virginia into the Chesapeake Bay. Its

uses are as varied as the communities through which it meanders.

Humans use it for boating and recreational fishing. Fish and wildlife use it as their habitat. And local utilities use it to provide

drinking water. In other words, what happens in the Potomac

doesn’t affect only one species of fish in Washington, DC. It has repercussions for all the life that thrives on its flow.

So, what about these fish that scientists have found in our river?

Do they have three heads? Three eyes? Are they growing legs? No.

That is not the case at all. The findings by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service are far subtler, but troubling

nevertheless. What they and other researchers have found is egg

yolk and immature ova being produced in male reproductive orVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Jul 31, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\30340.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gans. That’s what is known. Still unknown are the exact causes,

pathways and mechanisms of this unusual biology activity.

Some believe the fish could be reacting to organic chemical compounds such as human estrogen from processed sewage or animal

estrogen from agricultural run-off. There is also the possibility the

reaction has been triggered by manmade chemicals in pesticides

and cosmetics, or it could be a combination of both. Those questions

are still under investigation, and we look forward to hearing from

Department of Interior representatives about their research and

findings to date.

So, what about the drinking water coming from the Potomac?

How safe is it, and who is responsible for keeping it safe? This

seemingly straightforward question has a complicated answer. In

1974, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, requiring the

Environmental Protection Agency to set standards and testing requirements for contaminants. Those requirements are then implemented by the States. Because it runs through so many jurisdictions, the Potomac presents an interesting and challenging case.

Testimony by our witnesses today will shed some light on the difficulties of navigating through the twisting rapids and rocky shoals

of Federal and State water quality regulations.

The good news is that many water utilities meet or exceed current EPA standards. But the menu of chemicals and contaminants

finding their way into our waters is constantly changing, and the

science of detecting and eliminating those contaminants, frankly,

has to play catch-up.

EPA, along with other Federal agencies, has been studying

chemicals and compounds thought to be causing the intersex fish

phenomenon. We will hear from them, and from local water utilities, on how they advance the science and maintain vigilant testing

regimes to keep harmful compounds out of our water.

At the end of the day, researchers have yet to determine what

is scrambling the bass eggs. The preliminary conclusion as of now

is that the fish ova-pollution probably has no impact on human

health. Still, as the chairman of the House committee with jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, and as the co-chair of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force, I and many others want to know

more. We need to be certain these sensitive biological markers are

being monitored and studied so we can detect and eliminate potentially harmful substances from the river ecosystem before they

cause downstream environmental or human health effects.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today, and we

look forward to hearing from each of you.

I would ask unanimous consent that the distinguished gentleman

from the Commonwealth of Virginia Mr. Moran be allowed to participate in today’s hearing.

Hearing no objection, it is so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I thank you

for holding this vitally important hearing to investigate the discovery of abnormalities in fish in the Potomac Watershed and possible

implications for human and ecological health.

The Potomac River supplies about 75 percent of the drinking

water consumed by almost 4 million residents of the metropolitan

Washington region, which includes the District of Columbia, Montgomery County, Arlington and Fairfax County. I think we can all

agree on the need to make sure that this water is clean and safe

for human consumption.

Any safety breach of the Potomac water supply has the potential

to create a public health crisis of great magnitude. So, with this in

mind, I am terribly concerned about the recent discovery that bass

in the Potomac are displaying significant abnormalities.

Specifically, researchers found that more than 80 percent of the

male smallmouth bass they sampled were growing eggs, and 7 of

13 male largemouth bass had unusual feminine characteristics. As

you know, Mr. Chairman, scientists study the health of fish and

other similarly sized species to determine the health of the ecological system in which they reside. That is why many have taken the

recent findings with regard to smallmouth and largemouth bass in

the Potomac as an indication that problems exist in the entire ecosystem, and possibly in the human population as well.

Researchers attribute the fish abnormalities to pollution in the

waters in the form of endocrine disruptors, which are chemicals

that interfere with human and animal biological processes. Endocrine-disrupting compounds include natural and synthetic hormones, pesticides and compounds used in plastics.

In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey noted that at least 45 synthetic chemicals have been identified as potential endocrine

disruptors. Unfortunately, we do not know which of these chemicals or which combination of chemicals is creating the problem we

are seeing in the Potomac. We similarly do not know with great

certainty what the impact on humans will be. The effects of human

exposure to endocrine disruptors are not well understood, but some

have raised concern that exposure could lead to reproductive abnormalities or cancer.

Faced with this possibility, we cannot afford to waste time in investigating and addressing the problem that has been identified,

but I understand that this has not been the case. The EPA has not

yet implemented its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program 10

years after Congress mandated that it do so, and 7 years after the

statutory deadline. This is simply inexcusable.

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on how we

can address this problem in an effective and efficient way. Again,

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this hearing.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Moran.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for your

statement. Mr. Cummings and my concerns reflect those that both

of you have stated. It does seem that we are talking about endocrine-disrupting chemicals. There was a book written by a woman

several years ago that brought to light this phenomenon, but I

didn’t know that it was going to come so close to home in the Potomac River.

The problem is that this may very well be the tip of an iceberg.

Clearly we have a situation that merits a good deal of attention,

and that’s why a hearing like this is so important to see what kind

of attention is being given it by the experts.

There was some written testimony provided by Dr. Myers of the

U.S. Geological Service, a survey, and they—samples from 95 different emerging contaminants, drug, hormones, detergents, disinfectants, insecticides, fire retardants and so on. He found that at

least one of those chemicals was present in 80 percent of the

streams in this area, and in 75 percent of the streams there was

a mixture of those potentially toxic chemicals.

Now, they all have different reactions, but there’s been very little

research on what happens when different chemicals are put together, and I think we need a lot more research to see what the

combined reaction might be of some of these chemicals that are so

omnipresent in our water supply that we—I am afraid that the direction in which we are going is sort of like a ship without a radar.

We don’t know which specific chemicals are responsible for this—

our situation with regard to the fish. We don’t know what constitutes a safe and/or a harmful concentration of chemicals, and we

don’t know what we can do in order to reduce our exposure to

them. But until we do know the answers to those questions, the

public’s health could well be jeopardized.

So I think this is a very serious issue, an important hearing, and

I appreciate you, Mr. Chairman, for calling the hearing. And for my

two very good friends and colleagues on either side of us, they

came all the way down from Baltimore to attend it, so it shows

they recognize the importance of it.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thanks very much. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Thanks very much for coming down from Baltimore.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. The Government Reform Committee is the

investigative arm, and there are a lot of things that we look at, but

when it comes to an issue like this, it’s important because of our

water supply, because of how it affects us and how it affects our

way of life.

This discovery of intersex fish in the Potomac is clearly a problem. What we do know is that small and largemouth bass with

male organs and female characteristics as an example of carrying

immature eggs is a problem in the region. We do know this is

caused by endocrine disruptors in the water, and endocrine

disruptors are found in everything from chemicals to keep barnacles off boats, perfume and plastics.

Basically we can find this everywhere and in everything. These

chemicals can lock onto receptors and animals and force the organism to react differently. What we are finding is that male fish are

being affected by displaying female traits. Now, I am concerned

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about this because not only does it show our local watershed environment is in distress, but I am concerned for the safety of our

drinking water. It is still unclear about the effects of endocrine

disruptors on people. There is evidence that ingested amounts of

these chemicals can slow the development of younger people, but

may have no effect on adults.

Intersex fish have been found around the country. Because of

this concern last year the EPA convened a meeting in Las Vegas

to start to look into a large source of endocrine disruptors from personal pharmaceutical products. It gathered scientists, academia, industry and government together to look at the scope of the problem

and how it is affecting our Nation. I know some water systems

have already employed reverse osmosis water treatment systems to

pull out and collect organic chemicals and endocrine disruptors. I

applaud those steps, and hopefully we can encourage local water

facilities to do the same.

The way I see it, we must first secure the water supply; second,

find the source of the pollutants; and establish a system to address

the problem. These are the opportunities. These are the opportunities to see environmentalists and consumer safety, government and

industry work together on solutions. My concern is that we always

seem to have fixes for the tail end of solutions. I really hope that

we address the source of the problem.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Hon. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. I would ask unanimous consent that the

distinguished gentleman from the State of Maryland Mr. Gilchrest

be allowed to participate in today’s hearing as well. Without objection.

Mr. Gilchrest.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to sit

on the dais today and for the other Members from Virginia and

Maryland who show a keen interest in this particular issue.

I don’t think we probably should be surprised at this issue. I

think what we have done for the past 100 years, through human

activity, and with the development and discharge of persistent toxic

chemicals, is turning much of our land area, our water area, into

the kind of habitat that the Earth hasn’t seen for several billions

of years, and what happens under those circumstances is that some

of the most primitive life forms that in the subsequent aeons of

time have evolved become more pervasive.

What I would like to know, through the course of your testimony—and I appreciate all of you for coming today—is do you have

a list of the fairly well-known persistent toxic chemicals that are

used or have been used in the manufacturing, industrial sector for

many, many decades now, and which of those persistent toxic

chemicals are similar to the natural process of reproduction?

I guess the question I am asking is do you have a list of persistent toxic chemicals that we know have some similarity to the kind

of molecules in the endocrine system that is the reproductive system or the process of reproduction? Can those persistent toxic

chemical molecules that are similar to the molecules in the reproduction system mimic those natural molecules and cause this kind

of a situation, this kind of a problem?

The landscape around the waterways has been deforested. We

have filled in wetlands. We have paved over areas. We took a

rifleshot for these persistent toxic chemicals right into our water

bodies. We have seen this now for more than a decade, perhaps for

20 years, in reptiles and fish all over the world, whether it’s the

Everglades, the Thames River, the Susquehanna River.

We also know in certain areas not only because of agriculture,

not only because of pesticides and herbicides, not only because of

chlorine, but we also know it’s in sewage sludge. So it should be

no surprise that we have a pretty pervasive problem that because

of human activity has not been compatible with nature’s design.

Once we recognize that, it takes a lot of will, political will, community will, will from people that are making these policies or

evaluating these situations, it will take a concerted effort, scientifically and politically and human activity, whether we are dealing

with sewage or persistent toxic chemicals mimicking the reproductive system in the endocrine system—whatever it takes we need to

make human activity much more compatible with nature’s design

if there is going to be any in the decades or centuries to come.

But I do want to thank the chairman for holding this hearing,

and I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Gilchrest.

Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank

you and my colleagues for organizing the hearing and for the witVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Jul 31, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\30340.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nesses that will be testifying today. I don’t have a lot to add to

what’s been said, but I do believe that we need to address this

issue and get to the bottom of it quickly.

I think too much time has gone by since Congress originally

asked the EPA to look at this issue. I am sure we will hear testimony as to exactly what is being done at EPA and the other agencies that deal with the drinking water in this region.

But this is clearly an alarming picture where we have seen the

spread of the impact of the endocrine inhibitors on fish populations.

I guess there was a first indication of this many years ago. It

seemed to have been isolated. That seems to have been spread.

There are obviously a couple of questions that we need to answer

for the public. One is exactly what are the causes of this? No. 2,

what are all the sources of this? Obviously the major question we

all have is what is the impact on human health and the public

health?

So I hope we can begin to get to the bottom of those questions.

As Mr. Cummings said, and others refer to it, the Congress did ask

EPA some time ago to identify some of these chemicals and regulate them, if needed. As I understand it, we were supposed to have

a program in place by 1999. We have had lots of studies and advisory groups. We haven’t moved forward on this issue. I know it’s

a complicated issue. I know the science is difficult.

On the other hand, it is a question that, you know, has potentially huge widespread impact. So I think we do need to address

this with greater urgency.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. We now move to our first panel of witnesses. We have the Honorable Benjamin Grumbles, no stranger to

this committee, the Assistant Administrator of the Office of Water

for the Environmental Protection Agency; the Honorable Mark

Myers, the new Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, just sworn

in, welcome and congratulations; Dr. Susan Haseltine, who is the

Assistant Director of Biology for the U.S. Geological Survey. Thank

you, Doctor, for being with us today; and Dr. Gregory Masson,

Chief, Branch of Environmental Contaminants for the U.S. Fish

and Wildlife Service.

It’s our policy that we swear in witnesses before you testify.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. My understanding is Mr. Grumbles and

Mr. Myers are going to testify, and you are going to be our answerers on some of the questions; is that right, Doctors? Thank you.

Welcome.

STATEMENTS OF BENJAMIN GRUMBLES, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE OFFICE OF WATER, ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION AGENCY; MARK MYERS, DIRECTOR, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY; SUSAN HASELTINE, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF BIOLOGY, U.S. BIOLOGICAL SURVEY; AND GREGORY

MASSON, CHIEF, BRANCH OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINANTS, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN GRUMBLES

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and all the members

of the committee. It’s an honor to be here to talk about a most

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pressing subject and representing EPA. I am Ben Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water.

Mr. Chairman, I want to assure you that EPA is going to continue to be proactive and protective on this issue. Our mission is

to protect the public health and the environment, and specifically,

when it comes to water, it’s to work together in a collaborative way

to rely on the best possible science and to work to make sure that

America’s waters are clean, safe and secure.

So what I am going to talk about in the testimony, which goes

into great detail, but the summaries that I am going to provide to

the committee is to focus on the statutory and regulatory framework; also highlight some of the research activities and some specific activities working with our partners at the Federal, State and

local level in the Potomac Watershed, part of the greater Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Mr. Chairman, the first thing I want to mention is that the key

to being protective of public health and the environment is to be

proactive, and the Clean Water Act is one of the first of several

regulatory, statutory tools that we have.

Now, under the Clean Water Act, it’s all about keeping the water

clean and safe; and, specifically, one of the items under the Clean

Water Act we take very seriously is setting water quality criteria,

science-based criteria, for aquatic life and also human health.

The agency is proactive on that front. We are establishing new

criteria. Just in the last year and a half we established criteria for

monophenols and tributyltin based on the end points, the impacts

on reproductive developmental systems.

We continue to emphasize in using that tool, the standard-setting

tool under the Clean Water Act, the importance of keeping our eyes

focused on emerging contaminants such as pharmaceutical and endocrine-disrupting systems.

I also want to highlight the Safe Drinking Water Act, a critically

important statute to ensure that both source water protection is

carried out and that the product—whether it is the Fairfax Water

Authority or the Washington aqueduct, continues to provide drinking water that is clean and safe for this region.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, there’s several critically important tools that are relevant in the context of this situation. One

of them is that the U.S. EPA carries out a 6-year review process.

That is a process where at least every 6 years we review existing

maximum contaminant level to see if they need to be revised.

I can assure you that as we go through that process, the Agency

is very much aware of the increasing evidence, the widespread nature of these endocrine disruptors that are occurring in water systems, and using the tools under that 6-year review process.

Another key tool is the contaminant candidate listing system,

where we periodically list new contaminants for regulation under

the Safe Drinking Water Act. We are taking very seriously this increasing evidence of endocrine-disruptor chemicals and looking at

that CCL process as an opportunity.

The other one is the unregulated contaminant monitoring rule

where we require systems to monitor for unregulated contaminants. That is a great opportunity, and we are using that to require increased monitoring for these emerging contaminants.

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The other key statutory programs involve FIFRA and the process—of TSCA of reviewing potential new chemicals, and we use

that. That’s a very important part of the EPA strategy to nip in

the bud potential problems and to be preventive and proactive.

The Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program, Mr. Chairman, I

am here to tell you that we are working to implement that provision put in the 1996 act, that there are technical challenges, it’s

cutting-edge science. I am also here to tell you that we will work

harder and faster in making more progress on that front.

But I am also here to say that is by no means the only tool that

we have in our tool box, and we are using a wide variety of tools

to help get the job done and be proactive and protective.

On the research front, research priority for the U.S. EPA is to

carry out more field studies and lab work on the causes and effects

and occurrence of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals and to develop better technologies so that they can be treated, and the potential for harm is reduced dramatically.

The last thing, Mr. Chairman, I just want to mention is that the

key to having a sustainable and successful effort on something as

important both locally and nationally as this is to work through a

partnership and collaboration. So within the Potomac Watershed,

we, with other partners at the State and local level, are part of a

source water protection partnership for the Potomac, and obviously

one of the priority issues in that context are these emerging contaminants, these pharmaceuticals and other forms of endocrine-disrupting customers. So we look forward to doing a lot more work on

that front.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your attention and that of all the

colleagues on this important subject. I would be happy to answer

question when appropriate.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Grumbles follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Myers, thank you for being with us.

STATEMENT OF MARK MYERS

Mr. MYERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to present the Department of Interior’s

science regarding the characteristics of the fish in the Potomac

River.

But, I would also like to thank you for allowing me to bring some

real experts to the subject and hopefully can answer some questions. I will try to keep my comments brief and to the backbone so

that you have more time to get to the details you are interested in.

The term intersex or intersexual characteristics describes a

range of abnormalities in which both male and female characteristics are present within the same fish. The occurrence of intersexual

fish has been related to endocrine disruptors that affect the reproductive system. Endocrine disruptors also interfere with the natural balance of hormones that regulate development, reproduction,

metabolism, behavior and the internal state of living organisms.

The presence of this abnormal condition has been used as an indicator to exposure to estrogenic chemicals that have been documented in a variety of wild fish species in rivers and estuaries

around the Nation and in other countries.

The USGS has found such fish in the Colorado, the Columbia,

Mississippi, Missouri, Rio Grande, Las Vegas Wash and many

other locations in the country.

The USGS has studied fish health for many years. Recently the

USGS has documented fish and a number of fish health problems

in the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed associated with changing

water quality and habitat conditions. One of the major findings is

the presence of intersexual characteristics in smallmouth and

largemouth bass in the Potomac River.

In 2003 and 2004, in response to fish kills and increased observations of external sores and wounds on smallmouth bass and other

species, the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources and

the USGS began to initiate fish health assessments at selected

sites in the Potomac River. In 2005, samplings expanded to additional sites in the Shenandoah and Potomac Watersheds specifically to look at character areas associated with intersexual characteristics.

Preliminary findings suggest that intersex fish are widespread

throughout the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, but at a much

lower incident rate in other rivers in West Virginia.

Potential causes for intersex fish include chemical contamination

and changes in temperature regime and habitat. Current research

on intersexual characteristics has related numerous endocrinedisruptor chemicals to the reproduction effects in fish. These

chemicals include previously banned chemicals such as DDT,

chlordane, natural and anthropogenic hormones, herbicides, fungicides, industrial chemicals and an increasing use of chemicals including personal care products and pharmaceuticals.

Potential sources of these endocrine disruptors include human

and animal wastes, leachates from landfills, agriculture and individual use of herbicides, pesticides and even atmospheric deposition.

30

A limited amount of information is available on the distribution

of these endocrine disruptors in the Chesapeake Bay and major

river basins. During 1992 to 1996, the USGS conducted extensive

sampling in the Potomac and Susquehanna River basins.

Chlordane, DDT and PCBs were detected in streambed sediments

and aquatic tissues in the Potomac basin.

In addition the USGS has taken samples from the Potomac basin

as part of several national surveys of chemicals of emerging and

environmental concern since 1999, which include endocrine

disruptors.

Data from these samples from 1999 and 2000 indicate at least

one of these chemicals was found in at least 80 percent of the

streams with mixtures of chemicals occurring at 75 percent of the

sites.

There is clearly a need to further document the extent of the

intersexual characteristics from the Chesapeake Bay and other watersheds. Identifying the chemicals that are impacting the fish,

their sources, fate and transport will help managers develop solutions for the problem.

The USDA, in partnership with the Fish and Wildlife Service

and other agencies, are conducting studies to discuss some aspects

of the Potomac River basin. Field studies—field collections for these

studies were completed in mid-June 2006, and all samples are currently being analyzed. The final report of these studies is expected

in spring of next year. What we have learned there may be applied

to other areas, other watersheds.

In summary, Interior bureaus have been carrying out and will

continue field collections and analysis in the Potomac River Watershed. We look forward to continued collaborative efforts with State,

Federal and private partners to find better ways to understand impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the Nation’s fish and

wildlife resources.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for

the opportunity to present this testimony. Again, I have with me

two real experts on the subject, Dr. Haseltine from my shop and

Dr. Masson from the Fish and Wildlife Service. We would be happy

to answer any questions.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Myers follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me start, Mr. Grumbles, with you.

EPA has been criticized for the time it has taken for the Endocrine

Disruptor Screening Program to get up and running. I think it was

established 10 years ago in 1996. It’s certainly a long time to be

waiting, especially when you consider that the issue is of such importance to human health. It seems that it is several years overdue

from the NRDC lawsuit and congressional mandate. Why has it

taken so long?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Mr. Chairman, a couple of things. One is this is

cutting-edge science, as Congressman Van Hollen mentioned. It’s

complex. It requires validated assays. That’s the concept in the

statutory provision, which means not just EPA, but many others

involved need to make sure that multiple assays, not one single

type of test, but that multiple types of tests, are used, and that

they can be produced and reliable.

Mr. Chairman, the solutions are driven by the science. We are

committed to making an accelerating process under this program,

getting it right so that it is scientifically defensible. So it’s been a

combination of things.

We are here to tell you that we are going to make significant

progress. We are going to be looking to take the first tests under

the Tier 1 screening part of the program by the end of next year.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Do you have enough money for it? Has it

been funded appropriately?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I think the challenge has been less of a funding

challenge and more a scientific challenge. The Endocrine Disruptor

Screening and Testing Advisory Committee spent several years, a

good use of time, coming up with recommendations and ideas.

There have been some false starts in some of the assays identified,

or approaches, but it has really been less of the funding and more

of the difficult, complex, scientific issues.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. You know, basically this is a new field of

science with no validated test systems. Why couldn’t you use existing data or tests?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, we are committed to doing a couple of

things, using the tools that we have, but continuing to put a priority within the Office of Research and Development on developing

new tools, new methodologies and new approaches. So we are fully

committed to pushing as best we can, without sacrificing scientific

integrity, the development of these validated assays and identifying

priority areas and developing implementation procedures.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Just so we have a better sense, how long

should it have taken or should it take, for a new screening program

to start producing results from the time Congress requires, to the

time it is implemented?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Mr. Chairman, I think from—our objective has

been to get it done as quickly as we can in collaboration with the

other organizations in the scientific community. So, it’s something

that we realize—it is one very important tool. We have many other

tools that we are using, regulatory tools, to get at those most critical end points using the Safe Water Drinking Act and the Clean

Water Act, but we really do see the screening program as an important one.

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We are confident now that important discussions have been occurring from the scientific community we will make progress on it.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me switch to Mr. Myers and his team,

then I will ask you to answer this, too. I think the question for everybody, we are trying to get a sense of how great the human

health concern is of the chemicals in the Potomac Watershed.

That’s really the underlying question. Do you have any sense of

how the results of the test could be extrapolated from fish who

spent 100 percent of their lives in the water to humans?

Also, in your written statement, Mr. Myers, you indicated that

similar concerns have been raised over polar bears and panthers,

which are probably better comparisons to humans than to fish. Is

your agency able to shed some light on human health based on

these studies?

Mr. MYERS. Mr. Chairman, I will say a few words and then turn

it over to the other panel, particularly with the mammals to Dr.

Masson.

But the first part of any rigorous scientific analysis is to fully understand, A, the suite of chemicals that are present at the various

locations where you see the occurrences. So you need a robust

enough water and sediment sampling program. The second part is

enough physical evidence in the fish, enough sampling, an adequate sampling over a wide range of conditions. The other component is you want to try to reproduce the same situations that are

occurring in the laboratory so you can isolate and demonstrate

which chemicals are actually causing this.

Again, we are looking at a wide suite of chemicals here. We are

looking at very small concentrations of chemicals, parts per billions

or trillions in some cases. This is extremely dilute, which makes it

difficult.

Another component is the difficulties—we are dealing with some

very fancy manufactured chemical compounds, some of them very

small scale. Again, the techniques to develop and detect these

things in very small concentrations, the ability to isolate which indicators are happening and which combination of naturally occurring events in the water temperature, turbidity, etc., along with the

chemical combination is actually causing the changes.

So, again, it takes a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. What you are saying, it doesn’t take much

to cause these?

Mr. MYERS. It appears—now, again, the linkage between which

chemicals are causing it and the other environmental conditions for

each species has to be sorted out.

With that, I will turn it over to, maybe, Dr. Masson to discuss

it in the large mammals and on the other species that we are seeing intersexual characteristics.

Mr. MASSON. Thank you, Dr. Myers.

First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and hopefully

some of my testimony will help you.

I am Dr. Greg Masson. This is my area of expertise. I started

working on endocrine disruption about 17 years ago in Florida on

the alligators and did some work on the Florida panther, so I have

a keen interest in the subject matter. With the Fish and Wildlife

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Service we also have a keen interest, and we work very well with

USGS and EPA on these matters.

As to the contaminants of concern and the potential for endocrine-disrupting effect and the relationship to humans, we obviously deal with the animal components and the effects on the animals, and any interpretation for humans would be left to those

agencies to deal with human health.

However, I can elaborate a little bit and say that endocrine systems within vertebrate animals are essentially the same; that we

have the same basic hormones as humans, as do cattle, horses, alligators, fish, etc.; so that there are similar systems, and these inferences may or may not be brought by those health agencies.

These are contaminants of concern that generally last a short

time, are extremely difficult to measure in the animal systems.

And the biomarkers that Mr. Grumbles had been referring to are

new techniques and are only advisable and only testable in those

animals that can lay eggs generally.

Mammal systems are much more difficult systems to evaluate,

obviously, and the bass system is different also.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much.

Dr. Masson, maybe you are the appropriate person to answer

this question, just a followup to the chairman’s question. First of

all, is it OK to eat these fish?

Mr. MASSON. That is an excellent question.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you.

Mr. MASSON. And it is extremely difficult because these compounds are extremely difficult to measure. We have discussed that,

and I think the appropriate people that would answer that would

be those people within the States that put out the health advisories

for the consumption of fish.

But as far as the chemicals concerned and their physical properties, they are not known to bioaccumulate essentially, so they do

not generally last a long time.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Let me ask you a different way. If the fish up

there was put on a plate and fried and put in front of you, would

you eat it?

Mr. MASSON. The bass that is exhibited there?

Mr. CUMMINGS. That one right there.

Mr. MASSON. Without having dissected it and not having looked

at the microscopic examination, yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. You would eat it. The reason why I ask that is

because I think we are all concerned. We all understand that this

is our watch, and we here, sitting up here, I know you all, too,

share the concern that we want to make sure that people live in

a safe environment. I look at what just happened with spinach.

People all over the country were throwing away spinach just 2 or

3 weeks ago, and probably rightfully so, I mean, because it just set

off alarm bells.

I guess what we are just trying to get to is to break it down so

that we will have an understanding as to how, as the chairman

said, all of this affects the people that we represent. We certainly

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are concerned about the ecosystem, and so it seems to me—I don’t

want us to—I want us to try to get down to the basics.

You know, when we found that there was a problem with spinach, and I am not trying to say that this is any way analogous, but

it’s the only thing I can think of for the moment, all kinds of alarm

bells went off.

I am wondering at what scale, on a scale of 0 to 10, when we

see fish that have the characteristics of two sexes, I mean—I mean,

a scale of 1 to 10—does some kind of an alarm bell go off? It’s been

10 years now, and I understand what you are talking about, how

complicated it is. We are talking about chemicals, we are talking

about combinations. I am wondering on a scale from 0 to 10, 10

being superalarm, red alert, where does this fall? Can somebody

answer that for me?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, I would like to take a shot at answering your questions. They are excellent questions. I think everybody wants to know is the water safe to drink, are the fish safe

to eat?

Based on what we know, the water is safe to drink. After it has

been treated by the systems and in compliance with the Safe

Drinking Water Act, it’s safe to drink the treated water from the

Potomac.

The fish, are the fish safe to eat? They should be safe to eat if

there’s not an advisory, if there’s not a local fish advisory warning

against eating the fish for some particular contaminant. The question is, though, which we all are acknowledging, this is an emerging area, these endocrine-disruptor chemicals. We really need to

learn more.

For me, on a scale of 1 to 10, an 8, in the sense of a need to continue to be proactive; to accelerate more of the science, the studies

about not just occurrence and the sources, but the impacts on humans. We don’t have a lot of information about impacts, direct

threats to humans.

But you are right, fish are sentinels. They are warning signs,

and we need to take it all very seriously and be proactive and get

more science under our belt.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Let me say this, because my time is running out.

Let me just say this: This is my concern. We have an area in Baltimore where people, families grew up, and they later found out that

there was a large—a lot of cancer, disproportionate amount of cancer, and now they basically have gotten rid of everybody in that

area.

Now, when those people were there, everybody is saying this is

a wonderful, a swell place to live. I don’t want us looking back 10

years from now saying that we did not move with the appropriate

urgency, and then people have gotten cancer. I can imagine a

woman looking at this hearing right now possibly saying to herself,

if she is thinking about having a family, a husband and wife saying, well, wait a minute now, wait a minute, if that’s what it is

doing to fish, then how does that affect me and my children yet unborn?

Those are basic quality-of-life issues that I think we all have a

duty to try to protect the people who we are working for. I guess

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that’s what I am trying to get it at, Mr. Chairman. Any of you may

want to comment on that briefly?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Would you like to say anything.

Mr. MYERS. Congressman, we take the issue very seriously. We

will do whatever we can to support in the scientific community. I

think a couple of—there are multiple levels of issue here. The first

is how is the ecosystem itself being affected, how is this affecting

the stability and the population of the fish, and then how does that

work up the food chain to the other parts of the community, including the humans?

So if you start out, one of the difficulties in this problem is that

we are seeing very low concentrations of something that is very

persistent and not coming off a single point source. We are looking

at multiple different types of chemicals. We are looking at a very

complex relationship between the chemicals. Again, they don’t accumulate, so it is not like heavy metals or something that accumulates in increasing amounts in the soil; they are just there in a lowlevel, continuous way, multiple chemicals, multiple sources, very

hard thing to regulate.

Again, it’s a wide suite of chemicals. So, again, we are trying to

get basic knowledge on this. It’s not just in the Potomac, but

whether we have documented it in many other watersheds as well.

So it is a nationwide issue. We are struggling with it. Again, hopefully, through some good science, we can help start to answer your

questions.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Gilchrest.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yesterday at the dock at Turner’s Creek, I bought eight eels,

pretty large-size eels, 21⁄2 feet long, pretty thick, for $20, which is

a pretty good price for the amount of meat I was getting.

That is indicative of up and down the Chesapeake Bay. People

go to hundreds of places around their community—a waterman

comes in with catfish or perch or rockfish or oysters or whatever,

and someone at the dock purchases it, or it goes to market.

So I think the sense of urgency, to wrap this up and have some

understanding of whether or not you are going to eat that fish on

your plate or be concerned about eating that fish on that plate,

whether it has mercury contamination, persistent toxic chemicals,

I think we really need to get moving on the Endocrine Disruptor

Screening Program as quickly as possible.

The questions I have, the source of these complex chemicals, I

guess, would cover the gamut of sewage, industrial, air deposition,

agriculture, stormwater runoff, any of those. They are all potential

sources in the sewage—is it sewage alone, or is it chemicals mixed

with the sewage as it gets processed?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, a couple of things. One is you are

absolutely right. There’s a wide array of different sources. Our research and development office is developing a brand-new information system to be able to track and identify, do some real detective

work on the possible causes.

Mr. GILCHREST. So the question about sewage, and I know——

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Mr. GRUMBLES. We have evidence that outfalls at sewage treatment plants—that there are endocrine-disruptor chemicals or that

there are pharmaceuticals. It’s a combination.

Mr. GILCHREST. So those endocrine disruptors, in the sewage in

particular, it’s been mentioned here a couple of times, they are

short-lived. Are there any endocrine disruptors that are persistent,

that would be considered persistent toxic chemicals, and what

might they be?

Ms. HASELTINE. There are persistent endocrine disruptors, but

there are many more that are not persistent, and I must say that

in some of them, once they get into the biota, we don’t really know

that much about how long they persist, because they tend to be

modified so much and conjugated. That is one of the reasons that

EPA is having such a hard time with this screening process.

Mr. GILCHREST. Can you give me an example of what some of the

persistent endocrine disruptors are?

Ms. HASELTINE. There are traditional organochlorine pesticides

that we deal with all the time, and also many of the anthropogenic

hormones that we use in veterinary.

Mr. GILCHREST. How do they actually disrupt the endocrine system? You have these very various persistent chemicals. You have

short-lived chemicals. When they get into the fish or the alligator

or the panther or the polar bear because of their exposure, is it

molecule to molecule? Does the chemical molecule mimic the natural endocrine molecule; is that how it works?

Ms. HASELTINE. There are a couple of theorized delivery mechanisms. The most researched is that they adhere to the receptors

that we all have in our bodies for these hormones, so they mimic

what natural hormones would do.

Mr. GILCHREST. So if a molecule can mimic the natural hormone,

is there a level or a degree of exposure that could affect the endocrine system in a fish versus a human?

Ms. HASELTINE. There are some laboratory results which go to

that issue, but there is not enough information for me to give you

a definitive answer on that.

Mr. GILCHREST. Is there a timeframe where a definitive answer

might be understood?

Ms. HASELTINE. I think all I could say to you is we are working

as hard as we can to come up with these. You know, one of our

challenges is that we would like to be able to look at mixtures of

these chemicals, because that is what we are finding in the environment, and that makes our job harder.

Mr. GILCHREST. Is that what has happened in the Everglades or

the Great Lakes or some of these other areas you have described

used as a benchmark to see what the short-lived chemicals are,

what are the persistent chemicals, to have some clear understanding of the amount of exposure a fish needs or a mammal needs?

Ms. HASELTINE. I would say that we are still at the stage where

we are looking at the general distribution and the environment. We

don’t have a handle on that system adequately. Perhaps EPA has

more information.

Mr. GRUMBLES. No, that’s true. It’s one reason why this area is

a priority for the agency in getting more information and research.

Your questions are good ones.

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I just wanted to emphasize something. You were talking about

the fish, and EPA works very closely with FDA, whether it’s commercially sold fish, which is more of the FDA prerogative or area

of expertise and jurisdiction, or a recreationally caught fish.

Fish are such an important part of the diet and balanced diet,

and there are so many benefits. One of the important aspects of

this hearing and getting out more information is identifying what

information do we have, to what extent are there health risks?

We don’t have a lot of information that these intersex fish are

presenting a problem or a risk to humans. When we find—and are

finding—or USGS is throughout the country—incidences where

there are endocrine-disrupting chemicals or traces of pharmaceuticals, we are not finding high amounts of it, so it’s not directly

translating in and a threat to human health. But it is a real warning sign, and that’s why it is helping to define the research agenda

and the pace of the research.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much. I also would wish with

your partnership that you are talking about, local, State and Federal, that you have a strong partnership with the Corps of Engineers Enforcement Division for protecting forestlands and wetlands. That’s some of the sources of these problems.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Moran.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you, Chairman Davis.

Well, Dr. Masson, first I want to ask you about a book that I

read many years ago, it’s just coming back to mind now. It was

touted at the time as kind of a followup to Silent Spring. It was

a book about endocrine disruptors. What was the title and the

name of the author?

Mr. MASSON. I presume you are talking about the book written

by Theo Coburn on chemically induced alterations in animals in

1992?

Mr. MORAN. No, it had a much sexier title than that.

Mr. MASSON. There was another one called Earth in the Balance?

Mr. MORAN. No, the one by Theo Coburn. I was just trying to remember the title—Our Stolen Future. Thank you.

Mr. MASSON. Yes, the more recent book, I am sorry.

Mr. MORAN. I asked a lot of people about that in EPA and the

like, and they almost to a person dismissed it, saying that she was

exaggerating, that she was finding individual situations that didn’t

have much relevance to the larger picture and so on. Looking back

on that, it must have been at least 10 or 12 years, has much of

what she said been borne out to have both relevance and accuracy

today?

Mr. MASSON. With hindsight being 20/20, there are some accuracies that she has, and there are some parts of her book that obviously were fictional, and it can be interpreted in that manner. But

as Mr. Grumbles said, on a scale of 1 to 10, using animals as his

sentinel for all of our concern for the human and the American people, you know, a 7 is appropriate, that this is a concern for them.

And some of the scenarios that she had depicted in her book, Our

Stolen Future, can be explained, just like a lot of the quotes from

Nostradamus can be explained in that regard, but, you know,

enough that they can be corroborated.

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. Grumbles, we have had our run-ins before, interior appropriations on water issues, but I find you to be a professional, and I have been impressed by you.

I have to say, though, that I am not impressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. It just seems that overall, that Agency

looks for every excuse it can find to delay implementation of regulations designed to protect the public health.

This is another case in point. I don’t blame you because you

weren’t around in 1996, but this was 10 years ago. As the chairman has pointed out, EPA was instructed to make recommendations on how to develop a screening and testing program for endocrine disruptors. That was timely, it was important, it should have

been done.

Two years later, there was a notice outlining the program. Then

a year later it said that there was a scientific advisory panel review; 1999 you settled—EPA settled with the Natural Resources

Defense Council, agreeing to use its best effort to complete validation and so on. In 2000, there was a progress report which couldn’t

have outlined any progress.

So this is a bipartisan condemnation of EPA, at least in terms

of the endocrine disruptors program. That might be somewhat

heartening.

But, boy, in the last 5 years, there’s been even less action. There

was a validation subcommittee formed in 2001. There was a report

to Congress in 2002 on progress, of which there really was none.

Then there was, in December 2002, a notice on proposed chemical

selection for the initial round of screening; and, then, again, there

was another notice in September 2005 on chemical selection approach for initial screening. There has not been one chemical

screened, as far as I can see.

Now, can you tell me, any chemicals that have gone through this

screening process as was instructed to you?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, I respectfully disagree with your

opinion.

I can tell you that the Agency is being as proactive and protective as we can. The science needs to drive the solutions, and when

it comes to the screening program, as I said, we are working to accelerate the pace of that program.

Now, I can say there has been progress. We have worked, we

have set up the two-tier system. We are not just dismissing, Congressman, when you mentioned the dismissing concerns, far from

dismissing concerns about various types of chemicals.

The Agency has embraced the notion that it needs to focus on

more than just estrogen and on more than just pesticides; that it

needs to focus more on human impacts, but also ecological. We are

committed to work with you and with others to get more results

and to do it more quickly.

Mr. MORAN. I mean, those are nice words, Mr. Grumbles, and

those are kind of the words that we got in response to similar questions. But in this Washington Post article that brought this to

light, it said that even though in 1996 Congress required EPA to

develop a screening program to identify which chemicals are endocrine disruptors, 10 years later the Agency hasn’t tested a single

chemical. Is there one chemical you have tested?

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Mr. GRUMBLES. Under that program that is being developed, no.

And we will, by the end of next year, once we get the protocols

right. But under other authorities, Congressman, we had been very

proactive and aggressive, and we will continue to be, and we will

look for new opportunities for some of the tools that I have mentioned, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the contaminant candidate

listing process for new and emerging chemicals.

I can give you many instances, and I would be happy to submit

it for the record, where the professionals at EPA, and the research

office, as well as in the pesticides and the water offices, are being

proactive. We have studies under way to identify the occurrence of

pharmaceuticals and the causes and effects.

So I would disagree with the characterization, respectfully, and

say this is an emerging area, there’s cutting-edge science that is required, and we are committed to working with our other Federal

and non-Federal partners to give this important subject significant

attention.

Mr. MORAN. Fortunately for you my time is up, Mr. Grumbles.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again, thank

you all for your testimony.

Mr. Grumbles, you mentioned in your testimony that the fish

were kind of like sentinels, and I think other people said that

they’re like canaries in the coal mine, so I think when we begin to

see these disturbing effects in the fish, we really need to take a

more urgent look at it, and I think you understand that, and just

to piggy-back a little on that, the other half of that is the urgency

with which the science is pursued and the amount of effort and

time, and I guess I would just ask whether or not the EPA has yet

identified the list of chemicals that it intends to test.

Mr. GRUMBLES. I know that we’ve got some priority. We’ve got

a—very much part of our work plan and agenda is to identify priority chemicals/pharmaceuticals. We have identified priorities, under

our Research Office Program, specific pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors, and in terms of the screening program, that’s very

much a part of the protocols and the tiering process that we’re

going to use.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. Could you provide the committee with a

list of the——

Mr. GRUMBLES. I’d be happy to provide you with the materials

that we’ve got. Yes, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Good. Is atrazine on that list?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I don’t know the answer.

We do have—to answer your question on atrazine, which is a

chemical that is coming up quite a bit in the discussions over endocrine disruptors, we do have a standard for that. The Agency has

established a standard criterion for atrazine under the Clean

Water Act as a regulatory tool.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Right, but I want to ask you. Is that one of

the tests, one of the validating tests, you’re looking at for atrazine?

Let me ask you about that.

As I understand, the test is 3 parts per billion; is that correct?

That’s the current test? That’s the water quality test for atrazine?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Three parts per billion?

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. That’s my understanding. Is that accurate?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Do we know—I think—can we confirm that for

you and provide it?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Yeah. The reason I ask that is—look, the European Union has taken a look at some of these issues and pesticides, and they’ve decided that they are dangerous to the human

health. In fact, the European Union has banned atrazine. Now

atrazine has been found recently in the Potomac River waters. I

have here the Washington Aqueduct, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ analysis from 2005. Last April, they found the atrazine level

to be 0.5 parts per billion, which is under the EPA standard, but

the question is whether or not the EPA standard is adequate, because my understanding is that—research tests that have been

performed, once that unfolds, show that you can have a significant

negative impact at 0.1 parts per billion. Are you familiar with that

research?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Personally, I’m not. I am familiar with the work

that the Pesticides Office is doing to regulate atrazine, and identify, with the Research Office.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I guess the question is—there have been a couple studies. There were studies on humans, actually, in 2003 and

2006 on atrazine which actually showed that there was a significant impact on men exposed to atrazine at lower levels than the

current standard, and so I guess my question is here’s something

where the European Union has already said, look, we think this is

dangerous enough to the public health that we’re going to ban it.

So it would seem to me that we would be taking a really hard and

urgent look at this, and my question is, given the fact that it has

been found in the Potomac River and other rivers in the country,

what are you doing to followup on both the tests that were on animals and on humans that show that the 0.3 part-per-billion test

was not sufficient to protect the human health, and from the perspective of the Europeans, they said we’re not even—we’re not

going to mess with this. Let’s just not allow it.

Mr. GRUMBLES. A couple comments, Congressman.

I’m going to need to get back to you on some of the specific things

because I can’t describe each and every one, and need to coordinate

with staff on that, and will be happy to provide that to you and

the other committee members.

The other thing, though, is the basic point about pesticides. I

know that the Agency recognizes—and certainly, the Research Office—our research priorities are focused very much on pesticides

and synthetic hormones, and pesticides is one of the priority areas.

I also know that we are coordinating on an international front,

providing information and also sharing, learning lessons and also

giving lessons about different approaches on this cutting-edge

science, and pesticides is very much an important part of it; so are

some of the other—the pharmaceuticals and various endocrine

disruptor chemicals.

One of our messages, Congressman, is we are going to pursue aggressively regulatory tools and research, and stewardship is one

item, and one of the messages that we are providing to homeowners and to citizens is that the toilet is not a trash can, and as

more and more pharmaceuticals are in the marketplace and are

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being disposed of, you need to think twice before you flush it down

the toilet, and that is not advisable, that there needs to be other

ways to manage with these pharmaceuticals as we learn more

about their impacts on the environment and potentially on human

health.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Right. Do we look—Mr. Grumbles, do we look

carefully at the decisions made by the Europeans and learn from

the studies and conclusions they’ve drawn? I guess my question is

pretty simple here.

I mean are the Europeans wrong to ban it or are they more protective of human health?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I don’t know. I can’t speak to the merits of banning or not banning on that. I know that inclusivity and sharing

with other jurisdictions is important. We know about the U.K. and

their pilot studies on endocrine disruptors, and we will continue to

work to see—to learn more and also to share our knowledge.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Just two quick followups. EPA testing isn’t just limited to the

screening program, though, right?

Mr. GRUMBLES. That’s correct.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. So it’s fair to say the EPA is doing nothing?

Mr. GRUMBLES. No, that’s not fair to say.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. OK. Talk about the screening program. Talk about the other things you’re doing.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, I can speak to several.

Particularly as Congressman Gilchrest mentioned in raising very

valid questions about sewage in the mixtures and components of

sewage, one of the actions that the Agency is taking is a national

pilot study of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in fish

tissue, also a targeted national sewage sludge survey to obtain national estimates of source concentrations for about 50 chemicals.

We’re also doing a monitoring study of 30 emerging contaminants

as well as 60 conventional pollutants discharged from sewage treatment plants. We’ve had sampling at four sites, and more sites will

be selected, and we’re really working with the utilities because they

are in the front lines on this front when it comes to doing studies

about the occurrence, and also our Research Office is providing

funding for technologies to more effectively treat and remove the

pharmaceuticals or other types of endocrine-disrupting chemicals

at the utility itself.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Any more questions?

Mr. GILCHREST. One quick one, Mr. Chairman.

Is there any connection or potential connection between this Endocrine Disruptor Program, all of the screening that’s being done

and a broader look at TMDLs?

Mr. GRUMBLES. ‘‘TMDLs’’ are Total Maximum Daily Loads that

the Congressman is very much aware of because it’s essentially a

term in the Clean Water Act for developing a pollution budget for

waterways that are not meeting their water quality standards and

where more needs to be done and more action needs to be taken.

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I think it’s very useful to connect the dots between emerging contaminants and also the tools that we use and our State partners

use in accelerating the restoration of impaired waterways. A lot of

the TMDLs that have been developed to date—and it’s well over

20,000 TMDLs across the country—have dealt with the conventional pollutants, but there are certainly an emerging number that

deal with the toxic pollutants that are persistent and bioaccumulative ones, and as we gather more information on the scientific front

about pharmaceuticals or other types of endocrine-disrupting

chemicals, we are going to be providing that information and integrating it into the State Clean Water Act regulatory programs, and

the TMDL is a perfect way to identify an action plan to reduce

loadings that are causing the impairment.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, and a lot of these issues dealing with

persistent toxic chemicals affecting the ecological systems that we

all rely upon, sometimes there’s international arrangements or

international protocols or international collaboration on this research.

Is there any of that with this?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes, sir, and I’m—I will also commit to provide

more information to the committee from our Office of Research and

Development and our International Affairs Office about the international collaborations. I think this is a—this is not just a local

matter. As USGS and others have indicated, there is a growing

number of sites where these types of intersex fish problems are

being noticed. We are detecting endocrine-disrupting chemicals and

pharmaceuticals, for example, and it’s not limited to the United

States. It’s in other parts of the world, and that’s a key part of the

strategy is to gather more information and to share it globally.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Yeah, just a quick question because this is obviously a big area.

My understanding is there are about 87,000 different chemicals

in commercial use, and I guess the question I would have for you

is do you have any idea how many or what percentage of those

chemicals find their way into the drinking water, No. 1, and No.

2, how many of those do we test for, and that’s why I’m curious

as to, you know, whether you’ve put together a list and how you’ve

prioritized, because there are so many chemicals out there that

we’re clearly not testing for. We need to come up with, you know,

a rational way of deciding how we’re going to go about this and try

and obviously cover as many as possible.

So do you have any idea, of the approximately 87,000 chemicals

that are commercially produced, how many, percentage, find themselves into the waterway, No. 1, and No. 2, how many do we test

for?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, your point about prioritizing and having

targeted research and prioritizing the chemicals, we are focusing

on the endocrine programs on this issue on pesticides and also on

high production volume chemicals.

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When it comes to the Safe Drinking Water Act and the regulatory program, as you know, Congressman, we rely very much on

the unregulated contaminant monitoring rules where we have—

we’re working on a third rule regulation that identifies specific unregulated contaminants for monitoring by utilities.

I’m very excited about the future of the contaminant candidate

listing program under the Safe Drinking Water Act because that is

a mechanism where we do the best we can to identify out of those

thousands of chemicals, unregulated chemicals, which ones present

the greatest health risk, which ones have the greatest degree of occurrence, which ones will present the most meaningful opportunity

for reducing risk to human health.

So that process will continue. I don’t have a specific number for

you, Congressman, you know, in comparison to the 87,000, but we

are going to be using and will continue to use a screening process

to identify priority chemicals for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Moran, do you want to——

Mr. MORAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to congratulate Dr. Myers on his confirmation by the Senate. Congratulations, and it’s nice to see Dr. Haseltine here with

us as well.

We cited the study that you had done, Dr. Myers, and you’ve submitted it as written testimony. Is there other histological evidence

of these endocrine disruptors being present in streams in the area?

Mr. MYERS. Thank you for that question, Congressman.

I know I’ve made the studies—we’ve put some of the references

in the testimony, but I will defer to Dr. Haseltine, who can talk

about maybe a few of the key studies that have gone on.

Ms. HASELTINE. As I understood your question, you wanted to

know the number of studies that have been done in this one——

Mr. MORAN. No, just other—we focused on the one that the doctor cited in the testimony from Dr. Myers. Are there others corroborating that?

Ms. HASELTINE. Yes. There are endocrine disruption studies that

we’re carrying out and have carried out all over the country with

various species of fish, and from the Mississippi drainage to the

Colorado, we are looking at this—for this phenomenon and at this

phenomenon in association with water quality and other environmental changes.

Mr. MORAN. No. I understand you’re looking at it, but there were

some pretty startling discoveries in the Potomac, for example.

There weren’t smallmouth bass, so you looked at largemouth bass,

and you found that 70 percent of them or something had eggs in

them. So this was a pretty widespread phenomenon among the

bass.

Has that been corroborated by other studies that haven’t been

mentioned in this, particularly in this immediate area?

Ms. HASELTINE. No. I would not say that it has at those levels,

but I think we need to be cautious in interpreting that because this

study that showed those high incidences was looking specifically

below sewage outfalls, and most of our studies more generally sample fish in the environment. So, while, you know, obviously this

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needs followup, I would say that the sampling design would lead

to more——

Mr. MORAN. But the initial conclusion would be that it’s coming

from the sewage. They live in the——

Ms. HASELTINE. There certainly is a correlation.

Mr. MORAN. There is a high correlation, and when they are

swimming in the area that is immediately impacted by the sewage

outflow, there—the endocrine disruptors cause them to be what we

call ‘‘intersex fish,’’ and that was 70 percent of them, apparently,

in the one—in this immediate area, the Potomac. OK.

Well, that’s probably a good segue to the next panel, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Let me just ask one last question. This has been mostly upstream in the West Virginia area and less downstream; is that

right? Have we sampled fish downstream as well?

Ms. HASELTINE. I think we’re just starting to sample fish further

downstream, and you have some of the initial results.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Thank you.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thought I saw something

about the presence of this problem around the Woodrow Wilson

Bridge. Was I wrong about that or did—I thought I saw a report

about that.

Ms. HASELTINE. Yeah, that was one of the sites. Right.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. This is obviously an important issue,

not only for D.C. and the Potomac, so we’re going to followup with

your progress on the screening program and the work of all of the

Federal agencies to reduce these risks to human and wildlife

health.

So I’m going to thank this panel, and we’ll discharge you, and

we’ll take about a 3-minute recess as we move to our next panel.

Thank you all very much.

[Recess.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. The committee will come back in. I want

to thank you all for staying with us.

We have on the second panel Mr. Charles Murray, the general

manager of the Fairfax Water. Thank you for being here. Mr. Andrew Brunhart, the general manager of Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. Thank you. Mr. Thomas Jacobus, general manager of the Washington Aqueduct. Thank you for being with us.

Mr. Joseph Hoffman, the executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. Thank you. Mr. Ed Merrifield,

executive director with the Potomac Riverkeepers, and Mr. Erik

Olson, the director of the Advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council. I know you’re no stranger to this committee.

I want to thank all of you for being here. You know it’s our policy

we swear you in before you testify. So, if you would, just rise with

me.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. You’ve all heard the first panel. Your entire statements are in the record. We’ll give you 5 minutes to kind

of sum up or say whatever you’d like to say, and then we’ll move

to questions.

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Mr. Murray, we’ll start with you. Thank you, and Fairfax Water

for all the great things you’re doing. Thanks.

STATEMENTS OF CHARLES MURRAY, GENERAL MANAGER,

FAIRFAX WATER; ANDREW D. BRUNHART, WASHINGTON

SUBURBAN SANITARY COMMISSION; THOMAS JACOBUS,

GENERAL MANAGER, WASHINGTON AQUEDUCT; JOSEPH

HOFFMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERSTATE COMMISSION ON THE POTOMAC RIVER BASIN; ED MERRIFIELD, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/RIVERKEEPER, POTOMAC

RIVERKEEPER, INC.; AND ERIK OLSON, DIRECTOR OF ADVOCACY, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL

STATEMENT OF CHARLES MURRAY

Mr. MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present comments at

this important hearing. My name is Charles M. Murray, and I am

the general manager of Fairfax Water, Virginia’s largest drinking

water utility.

Fairfax Water is a nonprofit public water authority governed by

a 10-member citizen board of directors who are appointed by the

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Fairfax Water provides retail

or wholesale service to nearly 1.5 million people in the northern

Virginia communities of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William

Counties, the city of Alexandria, the town of Herndon, Fort Belvoir,

and Dulles Airport. Fairfax Water operates state-of-the-art water

treatment plants on both the Potomac and Occoquan Rivers.

As a large drinking water utility, we are regulated under the

Safe Drinking Water Act through the Environmental Protection

Agency. As with all community water utilities, Fairfax Water is dependent upon the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], to

set standards protective of public health through the resources provided by Congress and the Safe Drinking Water Act. In Virginia,

the Virginia Department of Health has been delegated regulatory

authority for drinking water utilities. I’m proud to report to you

that Fairfax Water meets all Federal and State drinking water regulations, and has never had a violation of any maximum contaminant level. In fact, Fairfax Water takes pride in not only meeting

these regulations but in surpassing regulatory requirements for

producing top-quality and aesthetically pleasing water.

You’ve asked me today to address my awareness and concern regarding a recent USGS study and a subsequent article in the

Washington Post discussing egg-bearing male bass fish found in

the Potomac River. Unfortunately, the USGS has not yet shared

the report referred to in the Post article, so I cannot comment on

it. What I can speak to are three things: My personal philosophy

on the profession of drinking water treatment, Fairfax Water’s activities in the National Capital Region to protect the Potomac River

Watershed, and Fairfax Water’s participation in advancing the

science associated with understanding endocrine disruptors.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, you’re dedicated

to serving the people of the United States in the best way possible.

We at Fairfax Water are similarly committed to serving our customers. A statement that hangs on my office wall, written by a

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former executive director of the American Water Works Association, captures the importance of our work, and I’d like to share it

with you now.

‘‘We are, all of us, water beings on a water planet. Water is life.

Without it, all living things die. Our dependence on water is absolute; our psyches know this and signal us in myriad ways of water’s elemental importance and significance. That is why we love

the water and remember experiences associated with it. Of the

earth’s vast resources of water only a small fraction is fresh and

drinkable. A few people among the globe’s billions have been

charged with the task of ensuring everyone else has a reliable supply of safe water. Supplying potable water is an essential human

activity, a great responsibility, and a vocation of distinction,’’ and

those words were written by Jack Mannion.

As you can see, with this philosophy in mind, it’s with a sense

of responsibility and commitment that I and the people of Fairfax

Water perform our duties as the major northern Virginia drinking

water provider.

To that end, Fairfax Water is a founding partner—or a founding

member of the Potomac River Source Water Protection Partnership

that Mr. Grumbles referred to earlier. The Partnership is a voluntary organization of water utilities, State, interstate, and Federal partners whose representatives are dedicated to source water

protection. The Partnership has identified endocrine-disrupting

compounds [EDCs], as a priority issue, and the Partnership is following the latest research into which specific chemicals may be

causing the endocrine-disrupting effects on fish in the Potomac

River.

The short-term goals include defining and prioritizing EDCs

based on a review of current knowledge and consultation with experts, assessing potential sources of EDCs in the Potomac River

and identifying appropriate, best-management practices for their

control. The long-term goal is to enhance local understanding of

EDC identity, sources, distribution, possible human and ecological

health effects, management practices to limit their presence in the

environment, and methods of treatment and removal.

In addition to the Potomac Partnership, Fairfax Water, along

with many water utilities across the Nation, contributes to and

participates in the activities of the American Water Works Association Research Foundation [AwwaRF]. AwwaRF is a member-supported, nonprofit organization that sponsors research to enable

water utilities, public health agencies and other professionals to

provide safe and affordable drinking water to consumers. AwwaRF

is the research arm of the drinking water supply community. I

serve on the Board of Trustees for the Foundation, and my utility,

Fairfax Water, is a longtime investor in AwwaRF as are most of

the water agencies in the greater D.C. area. AwwaRF operates a

$30 million-a-year drinking water research program, and to date,

AwwaRF has conducted 21 projects totaling about $5 million to

specifically study the issue of endocrine disruptors. It is this research that will ultimately help lead us to understand the significance of endocrine disruptors in the aquatic environment.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I’d like to close by noting that AwwaRF

is once again seeking funding from the U.S. Congress. AwwaRF is

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80 percent funded by local drinking water utilities and research

partnerships and 20 percent through the funding assistance from

Congress, and I want to express my strong support for the $5 million AwwaRF funding request in the EPA Science and Technology

account of the fiscal year 2007 Interior Appropriations bill.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Murray follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Brunhart.

STATEMENT OF ANDREW D. BRUNHART

Mr. BRUNHART. Thank you, sir. Chairman Davis and members of

the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear today as well

as we come together to discuss a shared problem worthy of attention.

I am Andrew Brunhart, general manager of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. I am also honored today to represent

over 1,400 employees who are dedicated to provide safe, clean

water to our communities in an environmentally and fiscally responsible manner. Now, this is just not a lofty statement for us

that we dole out at annual meetings; this is our mission, and it

drives the work we do day in and day out.

Departing from my script a little bit, in my discussion with you

today I think and I trust you will feel the passion amongst the

three general managers at the table today, and you will find our

remarks, independently prepared, remarkably similar. I have submitted a longer statement and attachments for the record, and I

just want to sum up a few key points for you today.

We are here today to talk about a very specific topic, ova pollution in the Potomac, but I believe the topic is part of a larger discussion that requires leadership at all levels of government and industry to resolve. What is the value of water in our society, and

what legacy are we leaving our children in our rivers, streams,

bays, and oceans?

Being in the business of providing safe, clean water and treating

what our communities send down the drains, I think about this

question daily. I think about the existing science and technology we

currently use to provide a service. Many in this country take that

service for granted. The 20th century innovators ensured that most

Americans can turn on the tap and receive clean water on demand.

This is an achievement we should be proud of, and at WSSC, we

have been an integral part of that legacy. Beginning with one of

our founders, Abel Wolman, who is widely known as the father of

modern sanitary engineering, WSSC employees have set standards

that many around the world aspire to. We are committed to providing the best possible product to our 1.6 million citizens throughout

Prince George’s and Montgomery County, MD. Throughout our history of over 80 years, WSSC has never had a water quality violation. We consistently meet and exceed all drinking water standards.

Yet we are not content with our past achievements. WSSC, working with our peers around the Nation and the world, look toward

continuous improvements in science, technology, investments, research, and business practices to get better at what we do. As Mr.

Murray mentioned, American Water Works Research Association

and Foundation is very important to us in our industry, and WSSC

is a founding member. We have contributed over $1.5 million to

AwwaRF since 1983.

In an ongoing effort to address this problem, the Chair of WSSC

and I met with Congressman Van Hollen, gosh, almost a year ago,

to discuss EDCs and the potential impact on human health. I

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would like to take this opportunity on the record to thank Congressman Van Hollen for his steadfast commitment to the environment and to his constituents. Thank you, sir.

WSSC did not create this situation, but I assure you we are as

committed as this committee and every panelist here today to work

with all interested stakeholders to resolve it. Of course, government has and continues to play a critical role in the legacy we

leave our children through a consistent commitment through leadership, focus and funding. That is why we are here today, to find

solutions.

Congress should play an important role, in addressing the required scientific research, but you should be wary of simply creating additional regulations to patch a problem. I believe the EPA

possesses the necessary statutory authority and regulations to address this problem. What the EPA has been lacking is consistent

funding from the Congress, and I’m mindful of the honorable representative from the EPA’s comments earlier on funding. With this

introduction and going quickly now, I would like to offer two suggestions I believe to be constructive, and urge the committee to

consider them for possible action.

First, a watershed restoration and congressional caucus should

be created at the inception of the 110th Congress to serve as a real

working group for all stakeholders. This group should include

Members of Congress from across the Nation, water utilities and

associations, environmental groups, agricultural groups, corporations, developers, pharmaceuticals, EPA, the Corps of Engineers,

USGS, and the State governments. Congressional leadership will

provide the focus in briefings, legislation development, funding considerations, and education. The goal should be to push the science

and research forward to get us ahead of this curve rather than behind it.

Second, Congress should restore funding to both the EPA’s State

and Tribal Assistance Grant Program [STAG] Program, and previous AwwaRF appropriations. Restored funding is critical to

proactively address the science and research requirements to protect our water supply.

While the EDC issue is a concern for water utilities, it is a major

environmental issue worthy of serious national attention. We

should ask ourselves the questions again. What is the value of

water in our society, and what legacy are we leaving our children

in our rivers, streams, bays, and oceans? I am fully confident that

with continuous funding commitments from Congress and the EPA,

along with investments made by industry leaders such as WSSC,

we can push the science to understand this situation better. It is

important that we create a forum like a congressional caucus

where Members of Congress and their staffs and stakeholders can

work through this issue together as you consider various policy options that have direct and indirect effects on EDCs in our waterways.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the committee, for the opportunity.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brunhart follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Jacobus, thanks for being with us.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS JACOBUS

Mr. JACOBUS. Chairman Davis and members of the committee,

thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I am Tom Jacobus,

general manager of the Washington Aqueduct.

The Washington Aqueduct operates two water treatment plants

and other facilities that provide water to its wholesale customers.

These customers are the District of Columbia, Arlington County

and the city of Falls Church. Falls Church further serves an area

of Fairfax County and the town of Vienna. Washington Aqueduct

is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

All of the water treated at the Dalecarlia and McMillan plants

is withdrawn from the Potomac River either at Great Falls or at

Little Falls. Washington Aqueduct’s principal focus is on producing

safe drinking water. This means that we pay very strict attention

to meeting current regulatory standards, and it also means that we

are looking to the future to ensure that treatment operations are

always protective of the public health.

A few examples of what we do are we participate in EPA’s ongoing evaluation of unregulated drinking water contaminants. We are

an active participant in both the regional and national groups

whose purpose is to advance the science of water. We contribute to

the work of the American Water Works Association Research Foundation by direct funding and participating in research projects. Our

engineers and scientists prepare technical papers and attend conferences to ensure we are current with industry technology and

regulatory developments. Additionally, we have contractual relationships with nationally renowned consultants in the field of

water treatment. We use those consultants to help us evaluate future treatment operations.

We are certainly aware of the reports of the fishermen and scientists in the Potomac River basin finding sexually abnormal, male

smallmouth bass, and this phenomenon is not limited to the Potomac River Basin. Our engineers and scientists have been keeping

abreast of the research into endocrine-disrupting chemicals. We believe that our participation with research, the research and water

industry groups and our collaboration with EPA in support of their

contaminant candidate listing are very effective ways to be involved in this issue. We will continue our involvement in the research of emerging contaminants, and will be prepared to take necessary steps to modify the treatment process to comply with any

regulations that come from the results of the ongoing scientific investigations.

I’ll close these remarks by saying that Washington Aqueduct is

also one of the members of the Potomac River Basin Drinking

Water Source Protection Partnership. Two of the goals of the Partnership are, first, to maintain a coordinated dialog between water

suppliers and government agencies and nongovernment agencies,

people like represented here at the table here today and like the

panel before us, people who are involved with source water protection, and second, we coordinate approaches to water supply protection measures in the Potomac River Basin. I think that these are

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both very important aspects of a partnership that has been developed by people locally and regionally here who are aware of the endocrine disruptor issue and other issues that face the—that give us

challenges in the water treatment business.

So I thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and I’m looking forward to answering any questions the committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jacobus follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Hoffman.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH HOFFMAN

Mr. HOFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be with you

today to testify before this committee on this issue.

I’ll try to focus my summary comments of my written presentation on four areas: The roles of the Interstate Commission on the

Potomac River Basin [ICPRB]; the Potomac Drinking Water Source

Protection Partnership, which we’ve heard about, a role that

ICPRB takes as coordinator to address legacy pollution caused by

polychlorinated biphenyls [PCBs], that are showing up in the Potomac River. I’ll use that as an example of one way that ICPRB helps

in this issue, and then I’ll try to give you a brief synopsis of some

of the issues surrounding emerging contaminants.

ICPRB, I’m the executive director. My name is Joseph Hoffman.

It was created in 1940 by an interstate compact that Congress ratified. We have five signatories, the States of Virginia, Maryland,

West Virginia, Pennsylvania, as well as the District of Columbia.

Federal participation on the Commission is through three individuals appointed by the President as Federal commissioners. The

Commission is non-regulatory. We address water quality and quantity issues from a watershed perspective. Our major functions are

to provide sound science needed by our member jurisdictions for

water resource decisionmaking. We want to provide leadership for

cooperative efforts that our member jurisdictions have related to

water resources. We want to facilitate opportunities and forums to

address significant water issues.

Let me first take a brief time to discuss the Potomac Drinking

Water Source Protection Partnership, which was begun in 2004 as

a voluntary organization. It involves us with the three water utilities present at the table today as well as a number of other government agencies, including our State members and several counties.

Trying to work to safeguard both public health and the environment, to date 19 organizations/agencies of the utilities and the

States have joined this partnership.

The Potomac Basin is home to 5.8 million people who rely on the

rivers and the groundwater for our drinking water supplies. Activities upstream of water supply sources—intakes, groundwater recharge areas—can and do introduce a variety of contaminants into

the water sources by relying not just on the treatment plants that

are out there but on multiple barriers to contamination created by

a variety of watershed protection activities and efforts the Partnership seeks to enhance drinking water quality and minimize risk to

public health.

We’ve got a number of work groups in this group. The first that

was created, and the one that’s really been active is the Emerging

Contaminants Work Group, that tracks and reports on newly identified threats posed to the river. This partnership and this work

group conducted a workshop in September 2005. It focused on

emerging contaminants. We also have a pathogens work group, an

early warning work group. I’m trying to illustrate to you today the

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value of these coordinated efforts on taking care of our water supply.

Funding for the Partnership has been varied. We’ve gotten some

support out of EPA. We’ve gotten some support from the utilities

and the States, but it takes a variety of funding arrangements to

make this thing happen.

I mentioned about PCBs. The ICPRB is serving as the technical

and coordinating resource for the District of Columbia, Maryland

and Virginia as well as for the EPA on trying to come up with some

answers on PCBs in the Potomac. We’re serving to ensure that we

get one TMDL created for this interstate body of water we have

called the ‘‘Potomac.’’

Emerging contaminants are of concern for us. They’re a concern

for our drinking water. These contaminants are not regulated.

They are not established yet as we’ve heard earlier. Groundwater

sources need to be a concern and need to be considered as we go

into expanded monitoring, which is essential to be able to tie down

these emerging contaminants.

The States are doing things. For example, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the Department of the Environment and West Virginia’s Division of Natural Resources and

the Department of Environmental Protection are addressing some

of the concerns upstream in the basin. We don’t have answers yet.

We had a question earlier. Advisories do not exist for these emerging contaminants in the waterways nor in the fish consumption.

They do exist for mercury and PCBs.

ICPRB can play a role. We’ve been around for 66 years as a body

that has been pulled together by our States and the Federal Government to work on some of these issues.

I’ll close there. My full statement is in the record. I’ll certainly

look forward to questions at a later point in the panel. Thank you,

Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hoffman follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Merrifield.

STATEMENT OF ED MERRIFIELD

Mr. MERRIFIELD. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

on behalf of Potomac Riverkeeper, thank you for the opportunity to

present this statement to the committee. My name is Ed Merrifield,

and I’m executive director and riverkeeper.

Potomac Riverkeeper’s mission is to protect and restore water

quality on the Potomac River and its tributaries through citizen action, education and enforcement. We have been actively following

the problem of fish intersex since it was first uncovered in our watershed by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2003. At that time, scientists were trying to determine the cause of fish kills 230 miles

upstream from Washington, DC, when they discovered ovaries in

male fish testes. The Potomac Riverkeeper played a role in educating the public about the problem by providing information to the

Washington Post’s front-page story on intersex fish in October

2004. Other stories followed, but because the problem was distant

from the Washington, DC, area and because the focus was on fish

health and not human health, public interest in EPA action lagged.

Two years later, the intersex issue is front-page news again, more

so than when scientists first learned of the condition.

The intersex fish are now turning up in the Potomac waters of

our metropolitan area, renewing the conversation about what is

causing such mutations and giving rise to a new question: ‘‘how

does this affect the millions of people living in the watershed?’’ Although water treatment facilities do a good job filtering the metropolitan area’s tap water according to the EPA’s standards, as we’ve

heard, pollutants not tested for by water treatment plants do exist

in the river. We know that low levels of caffeine and insecticides,

such as DEET, and a chemical produced when the body breaks

down nicotine have been found, and they are not regularly tested

for by water treatment plants.

While most scientists today are not ready to say which endocrine

disruptors are responsible for intersex fish, the need to identify

them is not new. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in a June 2002 report that overt reproductive endocrine disruption in fish does not appear to be a ubiquitous environmental phenomenon. Rather, it appears to be associated with

higher levels of contamination near pollution sources such as sewage treatment plants and industrial plants.

In 1996, Congress created an EPA Office dedicated to researching endocrine disruptors. Ten years after its creation, the Office

has yet to release significant information about which endocrine

disruptors are responsible for intersex or what their risk is to metropolitan drinking water.

A variety of sources emit potential endocrine disruptors into the

river. Antibiotics that are excreted or otherwise flushed down toilets do not always get filtered before leaving treatment centers.

Hormones from chicken waste make their way into water at poultry farms in Virginia and West Virginia. Stormwater runoff, which

contains everything from pesticides and fertilizers to pharmaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:55 Jul 31, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00105 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\30340.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ceuticals and personal care products, enter the water completely

untreated as does raw sewage from combined sewer overflows.

The issue at stake is the disposal of hazardous material and potentially hazardous material in a responsible fashion. We need to

actualize the goals of the Clean Water Act and stop dumping

waste, medications and chemical runoff into the river. We are already over 20 years behind the Clean Water Act’s stated goal.

Regarding human health, if scientists have not yet determined

what pollutant is causing a reproductive health problem in fish in

the Potomac, how can anyone say it is not in our drinking water?

How can anyone say humans will not face a similar health problem? At best, as we’ve heard, all anyone can say is that they do

not know if the endocrine disruptor effect on fish would affect humans. One cannot deny that there is potential threat to the millions of people who recreate, fish and draw their tap water from

the Potomac River. We know there are reproductive problems happening to the fish and, as Congressman Van Hollen said, these affected fish are analogous to the canary in the coal mine. The fish

are our warning.

Potomac Riverkeeper, Inc., on behalf of all citizens living in the

watershed, is here today to ask Congress, in cooperation with organizations like mine and the entire scientific community, to

proactively work to save our Nation’s river. With over 5 million

people in the Potomac watershed, with Washington, DC, being a

destination for millions of tourists, with minimal heavy industry in

the watershed and with Members of Congress and their families

living here much of the year, it makes sense to focus on the health

of this river.

To believe we cannot stop these pollutants from entering our

water is to sound the death knell of the goal of the Clean Water

Act. By working together, we can make the Potomac a model river,

paving the way for cities and States around the Nation to clean up

their water supply. With the full support and cooperation of the

U.S. Government and its agencies, we can have a fishable, swimmable Potomac with plenty of clean, safe drinking water for all.

Thank you again for hearing my testimony today, and I’ll look

forward to working with the committee in the future.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Merrifield follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Olson, thanks for being with us again.

STATEMENT OF ERIK OLSON

Mr. OLSON. Thank you. Last and hopefully not least, I wanted

to just summarize the testimony, but I’ll just note I believe it was

Congressman Moran who mentioned the Theo Coburn and Pete

Meyers book that was excellent that predicted a lot of things that

now seem to be coming true. I think most of what that book suggested is ending up to be a true concern more than 10 years later.

Now, these endocrine disruptors are chemicals that basically can

mimic or interfere with Mother Nature’s system, our hormone system, and we consider—these systems are extremely delicate, and

it’s sort of like a bull in a China shop. The chemicals are like a

bull in a body’s China shop. If you consider the fact that all of

these—all of the body functions for behavior and sexual differentiation when an embryo is being created and sexual maturation during puberty and reproduction during adulthood, all of those are

controlled during—with these hormones at extremely low levels—

we’re talking parts per trillion/parts per billion—that the body naturally controls these when we start introducing these chemicals. As

I say, they’re like a bull in a China shop. They can really wreak

havoc.

Why would a male fish have eggs in its testes? Why would some

of these effects occur? Well, this is a very sure sign of exposure to

some of these endocrine disruptors. In fact, the EPA has a proposed

screening test, which isn’t yet required which I’ll get to, that actually uses this very kind of effect in order to evaluate whether something is an endocrine disruptor. So, clearly, we’ve got a problem

here.

What in the Potomac is causing this? I don’t think anyone can

say for sure. Certainly, we’re finding, as was mentioned earlier, the

pesticide atrazine, the pesticide simazine and some other industrial

chemicals in the water in the Potomac. We’re not sure exactly

which ones might be causing this effect, but certainly we’ve got an

enormous amount of pesticide runoff. We have detergents and cosmetics coming out through sewage. We have concentrated animal

feeding operations upstream, way upstream very often, and we

have other polluters. Luckily, we don’t have heavy industry like

they do in many other parts of the country, but we do have endocrine disruptors in the Potomac water and in the river system.

Now, if we don’t have measurable levels, if we’re not sure what

the chemicals are, does that mean there’s not a problem? It does

not. First of all, some of these effects occurred at extremely low levels, some of which can’t even be detected in the water. Second, we

don’t really have a system to detect and analyze endocrine

disruptors in our water supplies.

There’s something I wanted to highlight also about endocrine

disruptors that’s extremely unusual. Many of us learned back in

college that the dose makes the poison for a toxic chemical. We

learned you have to have a very high dose to get an effect. Endocrine disruptors are turning a lot of that on its head. What’s important is the timing. What I mentioned in the testimony is some of

our scientists think that a lot of our thinking about toxins is going

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to change as a result of these new data. Some studies just published within the last year show that exposure on a single day to

a toxic chemical, to one of these endocrine disruptors, can cause

these adverse effects such as small testes, female nipples in a rat,

a birth defect in the penis called ‘‘hypospadias.’’ Again, the bull in

the China shop is operating. A single day of exposure can cause

these kinds of effects at very low doses, so we don’t really fully understand all of these effects, but we know that they’re issues.

What are the public heath impacts of drinking this water or of

eating the fish? Mr. Cummings asked that. Several others have

asked these questions. I don’t think anyone can answer absolutely

for sure, but first of all, we do know several things. One is that

chemicals that are estrogenic or endocrine disruptors in fish are extremely likely to be estrogenic or endocrine disruptors in humans

just as they are in polar bears, just as they are in panthers, just

as they are in alligators, in mink, in birds. We’re seeing similar effects, and the reason for that is simple, that Mother Nature, as she

finds a way that a hormone works well in a lower form of life, has

conserved that. So the same types of hormones are very conserved,

the biologists would say, from lower forms of life all the way up to

man.

Second, a lot of these chemicals that can feminize male fish are

likely to feminize mammals as well as other species, and obviously,

we’re mammals, so we are concerned about that.

And third, something that’s clearly estrogenic is in the Potomac.

We don’t know if it’s in the drinking water. We don’t know if it’s

in the sediments, if it’s in the fish, in the food chain, but it’s somewhere in there and we sure as heck ought to get some kind of an

idea about that.

I notice that there’s bottled water on the table in this committee

room. It used to be, I remember in testifying in past years, that

there was tap water, and I just wonder if there’s anything going

on here? Clearly, a lot of people are worried about their water supply. A lot of people—I see Mr. Moran is drinking a soda, but I

think that a lot of us are worried about water supplies. A lot of us

are worried about what this means, and we just aren’t absolutely

sure, but we do know that there’s something going on. Something

has to be done about it.

Some of these—the fact that fish live in the water and, therefore,

expose their entire lives, again, doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re

safe because we only drink water a few times a day or because we

only eat fish once in a while. The people we’re most worried

about—and our scientists have looked at this for more than a decade—are pregnant women and their fetuses. These are the folks

that are at greatest risk. So I might be perfectly happy to drink

the water or to eat a fish or something along those lines, but I will

tell you that I would certainly have concerns, if my wife were pregnant or if a family member were pregnant, about eating a fish that

is coming from an area that has been feminized, where the fish are

being feminized or drinking water that is coming from an area that

may have these contaminants in it that we haven’t yet identified.

So there clearly are health concerns.

And the last point I want to make is what is EPA doing about

this, and unfortunately, they’re not doing very much. Congress was

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very clear 10 years ago in the Food Quality Protection Act—and I

hope we get a chance to pursue this—to require EPA within 3

years to develop this program. As has been brought out, not a single chemical has been tested under this program. Mr. Grumbles

said earlier that there have been efforts to test under other programs. There have been a few efforts to test a few chemicals, but

there is no systematic program to test for endocrine-disrupting effects, and I will say that just in August of this year, a month and

a half ago, the EPA says they completed the entire Pesticide Safety

Review Program under the Food Quality Protection Act. They say

they reviewed the safety of every pesticide tolerance, and they did

not include any Endocrine Disruption Screening Program testing

for any of those chemicals. So we went through a 10-year process

to review the safety of pesticides. For not a single one of them were

there any EDSP, or Endocrine Disruption Screening Program, tests

done. That’s of grave concern.

What’s the EPA going to do now? They say they’re going to go

back over the next 15 years and review the safety of all the pesticides that we’re using in our food, in our water and so on. This

is a serious problem and is something that needs to be done. Our

testimony goes into some post solutions.

I see my time is up, and I hope we get a chance to discuss some

of those.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Olson follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Let me start the

questioning.

Mr. Murray, I understand—you mentioned—well, I understand

that all drinking water utilities are regulated by the EPA with

EPA standards. Can you tell us a little bit more about these standards? Are these standards limited to maximum contaminant levels

or they also prescribed testing and filtration methods? Could you

give us a sense to the length of time between promulgation by the

EPA of new standards for the production of clean drinking water

and the steps in between?

Mr. MURRAY. Let’s start with the maximum contaminant. Let’s

see, the first part of the question was the drinking water standards

and are they just maximum——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Are they just limited to maximum contaminant levels or are they prescribed testing and filtration methods?

Mr. MURRAY. Yes. We have both standards for the treatment

that we require to meet and maximum contaminant levels in the

finished water; and, as Mr. Brunhart said, there are a number of

contaminants that we monitor for that are not yet regulated but we

monitor to provide information to the agency so as to develop those

regulations.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. So, you are way over and above your

standards. You have your own standards even above the Federal

standards.

Mr. MURRAY. Yes. There are compounds that we are monitoring

for that there are not MCLs established yet, but we are doing it

as part of the unregulated contaminant monitoring rule which allows EPA to develop additional MCLs and standards.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. What do you think? You have heard the

testimony today about these, the mutant fish and everything else.

Obviously, it gives you some concern and some hesitancy as you

look through it. What is your take on it? I mean, does EPA appropriately describe and identify this, or are they behind the curve?

Mr. MURRAY. I sympathize with the complexity of the problem

and the difficulty of establishing standards. We have been working

with EPA and USGS to try to test some of these screening methodologies that they have been talking about. Mr. Olson referred to

one of them. It is an estrodial equivalence, and we have been working with them on attempting to see if that is a good measure of

endocrine disruptors.

It is a complex issue. All of the information we have from the research to date would state that it is highly unlikely that it is a

human health issue in drinking water, but we certainly, like the

committee and everyone else, are very anxious for more information and more research and we want to do the right thing.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Mr. Olson, let me just ask, if I understand you correctly, you are saying we are currently not testing for

chemicals causing endocrine disruption, but at the same time we

haven’t figured out what they are. How do we get from A to B?

What do we need to be doing?

Mr. OLSON. Well, there are some tests that are used to determine

whether something is an endocrine disruptor, and those are not

routinely required for pesticides or for any other chemical. Where

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EPA has fallen down, in our view, is that they haven’t routinely

required them. They haven’t issued this endocrine disruptor screening program requirement. So it is sort of hit or miss what is tested.

We have 80,000-plus chemicals. The vast majority of them—I’ll

just hazard a guess—99 percent plus, have never been tested for

these effects. So when we hear about meeting EPA standards—I

used to work at EPA. Love the agency. It is a great place. But the

EPA standards are kind of out of date, and they don’t really deal

with a lot of the problems.

And let me just give one example: EPA, to my knowledge, has

not adopted a single new drinking water standard that wasn’t ordered by Congress since 1979. Now that is a serious problem. What

we have is Congress having to step in and tell EPA what to do.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. When Congress sets a standard, that is

scary, right?

Mr. OLSON. Congress doesn’t really set the standard. They just

say, guys, it’s been an awfully long time. Set a standard, for God’s

sake, for these chemicals; and that is what’s been happening. Congress has to step in and say, set some standards. We heard about

the contaminant candidate lists and all of these other proposals to

move forward, but it’s been 10 years and EPA still hasn’t picked

a new contaminant to regulate based on that.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. And the key for us, of course, is we know

there are contaminants in the river. The question is, do we get

them all out in the purification process? And I think, Mr. Murray,

you are confident that you are doing that, but you continue to look

at this and Mr. Brunhart; is that correct?

Mr. BRUNHART. Let me add to that. In addition to what is required to be regulated, and we’re doing testing for chemicals for

EPA, we both run state-of-the-art laboratories and invite any Member to come and take a tour to see exactly how robust our laboratories are at testing and providing the data to EPA.

I would add that we are, from WSSC’s perspective, concerned, because environmental stewardship is one of our core values of what’s

going on with the wildlife. We are not alarmed for impact on

human beings at this juncture, but there is a lot we don’t know

that essentially everybody before you today has reemphasized because we don’t know the research or, over the course of time, the

science on what could be 87,000 chemicals untested, as Congressman Van Hollen mentioned.

If we knew if it was one or two chemicals—this is our passion.

This is our business. We don’t make a lot of money on what we do.

We do it because we serve citizens. If we knew it was those chemicals, we would work in our industry to get them out of the source.

One final comment because I know you have other questions.

The reason I urge this to be considered at a national level is what

is the engine to discuss the sources. The engine in water utility is

AwwaRF, and we banded together to do some really interesting—

nationally some miniscule studies that are bringing us forward as

a utility and water industry. But there’s many other industries

that, in my view, should be banded together. There’s EDCs in food,

for example. And I could go on and on.

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But who’s going to be that engine? In my view, Congress could

show us some leadership in a caucus to bring us all together to

really address this.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. I think we will get some activity there.

Mr. Murray, a lot of Fairfax water comes from the aqueduct. It

doesn’t come directly from the river. We have had no problems

there, is that right, with the mutant fish?

Mr. MURRAY. We have no evidence of a problem there, but,

again, we are trying to advance the science that we know we are

measuring for the right things. The limited testing that has been

done on both the Potomac and the Occoquan at our treatment

plants suggest that there isn’t a significant concentration in the incoming water, and what we are measuring we are doing a good job

of removing. So we are waiting for the science to catch up and

allow us to refine that methodology and to give us more definitive

answers on the health significance and concentration issues.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Mr. Moran.

Mr. MORAN. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.

This is fascinating but also a very scary subject.

First of all, I did want one point of clarification. We have talked

only about the feminization of male fish. Isn’t there a

masculinization of female fish? Doesn’t that also occur? I don’t

know who wants to—somebody can confirm that. Isn’t it just as

prevalent?

Mr. MERRIFIELD. On the Ohio River, some fish were getting masculine characteristics. Female fish were getting masculine characteristics because of dairy farm chemicals that were going to the

dairy farm. They had it very specifically. So it happens.

Mr. MORAN. So it happens to all of the sexes. This happens to

be a situation that we are finding male fish with eggs in their testes.

The one that troubled me particularly, and I was surprised that

the woman from the U.S. Geological Survey didn’t seem to be particularly familiar with, but when they did this test in the Potomac,

apparently in the area that comes right out from the sewage treatment area that 70 percent—they weren’t finding smallmouth bass

but they found largemouth bass and 70 percent of them, the males,

had eggs in their testes. So this was very widespread problem.

What troubles me is the reason—I don’t really have a lot of questions for this panel. You are doing your job. But you attempt to purify our water to the best you can, identify harmful chemicals and

materials that could be harmful out of—take those out of the

water. But none of you are responsible for the research to determine which of those chemicals are harmful or particularly what

compound of chemicals can be harmful, and very little research has

been done, if any, on the compound of chemicals. So we may find

individual chemicals are OK, but when they are thrown in the

water with other chemicals, they create a much more toxic effect.

I am very much concerned with regard to the intergenerational

effect as well of some of these chemicals. I am recalling some of the

things I read in the book by Theo Colburn in which it seemed to

be—I pursued it and found that it was verifiable.

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One was the rats apparently have—it is a triangle, and they

have six eggs, a female rat. And they were showing how thin the

membrane between the various eggs is that they did the experiments. And it is not dissimilar from the human membrane when

the fetus starts—begins development. They put—I remember one

case they put in a male fetus, I guess, between two female, and the

membrane was so porous in every case the male turned out to be

gay, to have feminine characteristics. And then they did a disrupter test and they found to almost a hundred percent—I am digressing here a little bit, but that research seems to be done by private groups, not by governmental groups; and when it is done by

private groups, it seems like there are always critics, particularly

in the Federal Government. It says, well, this hasn’t been confirmed, and so we really don’t need to look at it, and we’re doing—

you know, we are studying it, and we have a process going. It is

particularly irritating for EPA that for 10 years they have had a

process going and have yet to actually test one single chemical

under this endocrine disruption category.

If you had your—this is a whole lot of introduction by way of

asking my question—if you had your druthers, what would we be

doing to make you more confident that you are able to do the job,

you are responsible for carrying it out?

Mr. Merrifield seems to——

Mr. MERRIFIELD. Yes. The thousands and thousands of chemicals

we have that are in the environment, if Congress doesn’t come up

with a way of stopping them from going into the water, we will

never be sure if our water, what is coming out of our taps, is completely safe, because there will always be more chemicals to be

checked and more fascinating stories that you have been telling

about what can happen. Somehow we have to get back to the basic,

the Clean Water Act, to stop all of this pollution getting back into

the water.

Mr. MORAN. The two things that I came away with from reviewing that literature—and, granted, it was 10 or 12 years ago—was

the effect of the compounded chemicals which we know virtually

nothing about, and then the vulnerability of the egg, the fetus,

within a woman’s womb. Once it gets in there, it can cause an

intergenerational effect that we—I mean, it is almost impossible to

find the causal factor two or three generations subsequently. And

no research was—or no public research has been done on it, and

that is what is so scary.

I just don’t feel as though this panel is being given the tools that

you need to be able to carry out your job, which is really intensive

research on these potential endocrine disruptors and related chemicals in terms of the public health.

So I thank you for the panel. I don’t know that you are the ones

who should be answering these questions. I think that we are ill

preparing you to fully carry out your job, but you all do a good job,

in particular as private commentators as well. Thank you for all

your volunteer work and oversight that you provided. Thanks.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me thank all of the witnesses for their testimony.

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Mr. Brunhart, thank you for your leadership at WSSC, where I

get my water; and thanks for your kind remarks and the recommendations that you made and others have made of how we can

move forward here.

If I can just ask the representatives who are tasked with the—

responsible for providing the people in this region for safe drinking

water, Mr. Murray, Mr. Brunhart and Mr. Jacobus, whether you

are satisfied—this goes a little bit to Mr. Moran’s question—whether you are satisfied that the EPA is moving as swiftly as it can and

should with respect to doing the research in this area.

Mr. BRUNHART. Well, I will make two comments. As I think we

are today just by talking about a very important issue, I have

learned a lot. I think the pace, in my view, is too slow. I think that

EPA has—does not have as much funding as they would need to

step up to the large challenge.

However, my personal concern is that when you have a large

challenge, you incrementally address it and you try to prioritize

and incrementally address the highest priorities, and I don’t see

that happening in the pace. That is my personal view.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

Any other comments from the others?

Mr. JACOBUS. I would say that I believe—I have confidence that

EPA has the direction and the will and the understanding. As far

as the pace, what Washington Aqueduct could do is we cooperate

with programs to work on the contaminants list, to work on the unregulated studies. So we can provide it and work tirelessly to make

sure the water we produce meets the regulations.

We have confidence in the regulations. We understand there are

emerging contaminants; and we, as a water utility, have a responsibility to work with science and regulations and think we are

doing a good job of that in trying to help EPA get to where they

want to be and where we all need to be to have a high degree of

confidence that the new substances that could be coming into the

water can be removed.

But I would just say, in agreeing with Mr. Merrifield that it is

very easy to—the treatment process for something that is not there

is very simple. So if you can keep these contaminants out of the

source water—in our case, the falling of the Potomac—that emphasis there is much easier to keep them out of the water than it is

to devise treatment processes once they are in the water. So that

is why all of us in the three utilities, together with our State and

Federal and local partners, felt that this partnership locally would

be a good idea and it has gotten started. It’s been there for a couple

of years, and we certainly have a commitment of energy and local

resources.

So I am encouraged—and there is a lot to be done, but I am encouraged and we are cautioned by the results of the science that

we see and we want to do more.

Mr. MURRAY. I want to answer two ways.

First of all, I think EPA, as an agency, does a pretty darn good

job of establishing MCLs, the process of establishing standards. I

think that Mr. Moran captured it when he talked about the need

for research. I spoke at some length about AwwaRF, a research

foundation started by the water utilities. It was started years and

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years ago because there was an unmet need for research, and I

think that says it all.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

My understanding is the research budgets in some of these areas

are being cut back and the EPA is saying that, instead, the industry should be doing the research, which seems to me to get it entirely backward. This is a public health issue. This is research that

should be done on behalf of the citizens.

I think the partnership is a great vehicle, I think, for coming together and putting, you know, pressure and making recommendations on the EPA. So I encourage all of you—Mr. Hoffman, your organization is the chair of that, as I understand it, is that correct?

Mr. HOFFMAN. We don’t chair it. Basically, the administrator and

coordinator try to pull together.

We will note for you for the record that we have our annual

meeting of the partnership coming up October 25th. We suggested

in our testimony—the full testimony for this committee today the

idea that we can play a much larger role in trying to pull together

this issue for the Potomac River Basin. I think, at the same time

set a pretty good model in place for the entire country to follow as

additional areas start to be concerned about this or other water related issues. We certainly are available to do that.

Unfortunately, we have only been able to devote a small portion

of our budget to the endocrine disruptors and the emergent contaminants. However, it is one that we need to find a way to do

some more things on.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I am pleased to hear that. Because, as Mr.

Olson said and Mr. Brunhart said in their testimony, these chemicals tend to exhibit two chemicals: One is, they both said they don’t

exhibit conventional toxicological dose response characteristics in

contrast to conventional contaminants. They may cause significant

problems at very low levels. And the other issue is that they may

have very powerful effects during the early stages of life, but the

impact may be long term, and you may not be able to see them

until quite farther down the road.

Let me, if I can, finish with a question. Obviously, we want to

deal with this at the source level, No. 1, but there is also, of course,

the treatment level, and I guess my question is—I don’t know if

this is a class of chemicals or agents that would lend itself to a particular kind of treatment, that even before you do all of the studies

on whether it is going to have negative impacts, whether there is

some kind of treatment that can be used, assuming there would be

a negative impact, that would not have a downside that would be

able to address these issues.

I have been told there is something called the ozone treatment,

is one kind of treatment. Very expensive, but a treatment. There

is another one, is granual activated carbon treatment. Are those

things we should look at without reducing our efforts on the source

side? Are those things that should be looked at on the treatment

side? And what are the pluses and minuses of doing that?

Mr. BRUNHART. There is some evolving evidence on a study or

two that activated carbon in combination with ozone can be somewhat effective. Fairfax is leading the way on that.

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And there is also evidence that ultraviolet light treatment, ultraviolet light, UV, coupled with hydrogen peroxide dosage can be as

effective as activated carbon as well. WSSC is going to—the UV

treatment in Fairfax has gone to activated carbon. In other words,

we are both on the cutting edge in those regards, but we need

much more science to tell us what should be the effluent and for

what chemicals.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Would those techniques be effective?

Mr. MURRAY. Yes, sir, it is. We did a survey, and 90 percent of

the big-city utilities do not use these more advanced treatments.

That is obviously going to have to be the long-term direction that

they go. We are not arguing for one specific treatment, but there

are treatments now, advanced treatments, including the Fairfax

County Water Authority treatment, that can be very effective at removing a wide class or wide array of contaminants. That plus pollution prevention has to be where we go.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Let me thank this panel. I mean, we are just so pleased our local

utilities are here today. They are willing to answer our questions

so openly. We look forward to continuing to work with you, and we

appreciate all of the work you and the other panels are doing to

keep our water safe for human consumption and for wildlife. We

will continue to pursue this matter.

This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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