费城水务局（PWD）和许多饮用水公用事业公司一样，将把20世纪90年代作为变革的十年来回顾。消毒剂/消毒副产品规则、强化地表水处理规则、总大肠菌群规则以及铅和铜规则都要求重新检查水务设施使用的管理实践，以及人们认为可接受产品的方式和内容。新规则将要求更多的变化、更多的监控和更多的客户教育/互动。然而，最近的事件表明，尽管符合监管规定的标准，但饮用水疫情仍会发生。在几十年的治疗经验中形成的多重障碍现在正因其充分性而受到质疑。事实上，这些规则降低了治疗的灵活性，需要更专业、更精细的操作过程。这使得治疗更容易失败——监管要求定义的失败，而不是公共安全风险。 本文主要讨论拟议的法规及其对提供高质量饮用水的影响。这是一个重要的问题，因为在国家法规用于提高基线质量的同时，日常运营是保护公共健康的。

The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD), like many drinking water utilities, will look back at the 1990s as the decade of change. The Disinfectant/Disinfection By-Products Rule, the Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule, the Total Coliform Rule and the Lead and Copper Rule are all requiring a re-examination of the management practices in use at a water utility and how and what one considers an acceptable product. The new rules will call for more changes, more monitoring and more customer education/interaction. Yet recent episodes have shown that drinking water outbreaks will occur despite compliance with the standards set through regulation. Multiple barriers developed over decades of treatment experience are now being questioned for their adequacy. In fact, the rules reduce flexibility in treatment, requiring more specialized and finely operated processes. This makes treatment more susceptible to failure - failure as defined by regulatory requirements rather than risks to public safety. This paper centers on the proposed regulations and their impact on providing high quality drinking water. This is an important issue since it is daily operations that protect the public health while national regulations serve to improve a baseline quality.