(otherwise known as Water Quality Reports)

Recent amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act  now require nontransient, noncommunity K-12 schools and child care centers to provide annual water quality reports to their clients and employees.  The owners of these supplies are now asked to make the reports available to their employees and the parents of children under 18 years of age by October 1 of each year, starting in 2001. 

These reports encompass all water sampling and violation data for the previous calendar year, as well as any health effects information connected to any maximum contaminant level violations that occurred during that time frame, if any. 

A fact sheet containing important information which will help to clarify this new regulation can be downloaded using Adobe Acrobat. 

All of this may sound confusing, but the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's Noncommunity Unit has sought to simplify the process by providing a one-page template with a fill-in-the-blank format that may be used by the supplies to comply with this regulation. 

Also available is a monitoring summary sheet that the supplies can distribute along with the summary to better explain what contaminants they are required to sample for.  The summary also contains the required language that must be used for reporting certain MCL violations that might have occurred during the previous calendar year.

Important items to remember:

• The supplies are NOT required to file copies of the report with the local health department. 
• The supplies are NOT required to give copies of the report to anyone who is not an employee or parent of minor children.
• The supply IS required to keep a copy of the report available for a period of at least five years.
• The supply IS required to post notice in the facility for at least 30 days that the report is available for review.

For any questions regarding this matter, the supplier may contact their local health department Noncommunity staff person or the DEQ noncommunity unit staff assigned to their district.