Costly Water Testing Fees

The Issue: DEQ’s new water testing fees of about $10,000 per well is a bit too steep for struggling businesses.

Our View: It’s a dilemma worthy of serious review by all concerns to ensure both safety and some savings.

The discovery of cancer-causing chemicals (PCBs) in the soil in Tanapag Village has heightened public suspicion about water safety. Perhaps this is the very reason that the Division of Environmental Quality has embarked on water testing to ensure that tab water is safe for public consumption.

There’s nothing wrong with this position–ensuring that public water is safe for use by all consumers–except perhaps that the cost may be too steep for the struggling private sector. It is especially costly for businesses, i.e., hotels who have more than one water well.

And so there emerges the current debate of a hefty water testing fee versus the necessity to ascertain that our tab water isn’t contaminated with cancer-causing contaminants or chemicals. Both concerns are legitimate and require revisiting to ensure that businesses aren’t necessarily burdened with fees beyond what they now must shoulder. At the same time, it remains everybody’s responsibility to ensure that the water we consume is free of cancer-causing contaminants.

Assuming that CUC has a total of 300 water wells. This would translate to $3 million in annual water testing fees. The new fees may even trigger an increase in water rates to cover for this additional cost. Consumers may disagree but then it is vitally important that such tests are conducted to make sure our tab water is free of fatal pollutants or chemicals.

Perhaps DEQ ought to determine the origin of chemicals seeping into our water lenses. Is it from oil spills (no matter the amount) from ships in the harbor or oil tankers? Is the source the unscrupulous dumping of used oil from auto-shops around the island? Is it an amalgam of chemicals seeping into water lenses at Puerto Rico Dump, power generation plants or by-products of filtered water from water companies dumped into leaky septic tanks or all of the above?

Both sectors need to converge so to revisit the new water testing fees. We are convinced that a reduced fee could be had without sacrificing the safety of tab water. A proactive review ought to resolve this matter hopefully in the nearest future. Si Yuus Maase`!