Court Opinion

ID: 9606282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:48:44.358828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:07.299673
License: Public Domain

Smith, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that even if the public water lines under the operator’s control contaminated all the private water lines in the system, the director’s authority regarding the water system as a whole extends solely to the public lines. Not only is that conclusion logically odd, but it is also directly at odds with the clear legislative intent of the Georgia Safe Drinking Water Act — an intent recognized by the majority opinion itself — namely, to protect the health of the people of Georgia.
The EPD is charged with the responsibility of overseeing the quality of Georgia’s drinking water to ensure the protection of the public health and welfare. To that end, the legislature vested the EPD and its director with broad discretionary powers. See OCGA § 12-5-174 et seq. The lone explicit statutory restriction on the director’s power is found in OCGA § 12-5-178, which limits him only as to making any variances or exemptions less stringent than the federal standard.
The legislature recognized that the EPD and its director need broad discretionary powers in order to protect the health of the people. The declaration of policy states in part: “It is the intent of this part to confer discretionary administrative authority upon such agency to take the above related circumstances into consideration in its decisions and actions in determining, under the conditions prevailing in specific cases, those procedures to best protect the public interest.” OCGA § 12-5-171. Accordingly, the administration of a public water system ought always to be conducted with an eye toward serving the public. But here, neither the public interest nor the public health was protected by requiring the operator to clean some lines while leaving others contaminated.
Furthermore, OCGA § 12-5-172 (11) defines a “public water sys*741tem” first and foremost as “a system for the provision to the public of piped water for human consumption, . . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) In this case, water fit “for human consumption,” while accessible at the service connection, is nevertheless unavailable to the public in their homes due to the water system’s having contaminated the lines running from the service connection to those homes. Contrary to the majority’s view that the director’s duty ends at the service connection, the statute contemplates and provides the authority for the EPD and its director to ensure that the people receive water fit for human consumption.
Decided January 21, 1988.
Adams, Gardner, Ellis & Inglesby, Brent J. Savage, George L. Lewis, for appellants.
Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Robert S. Bomar, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Would the majority of this Court hold that the director’s duty ends at the service connection if the public water system had contaminated all the lines with arsenic and the lines from the service connections to the homes remained contaminated?