The drinking water quality standards and guidelines in developed countries are subject to periodical reviews and revisions. To be consistent with the trends of international drinking water quality management systems, the EPA of Taiwan launched a three-year project entitled 「Screening and monitoring of candidate contaminants for source water and drinking water standards」, the purposes of this project are to assess the current drinking water quality regulatory systems and to review the water quality standards in Taiwan. The results and recommendations for first year study are: 1. Thirty candidate contaminants (the Contaminant Candidate List, CCLs) were selected based on the recommendations from the Expert Panel. A database was established for the thirty potential contaminants in CCLs based on the information collected from WHO, USEPA, the project reports of Taiwan EPA and other sources. This database can be used by Taiwan EPA to determine whether it is necessary to be included in the water quality standards. It was also recommended that the water quality standards should be established based on the health risk assessment of each contaminant. 2. Water samples were collected from the treatment processes of seven treatment plants and 14 water quality parameters were analyzed. It was observed that E. Coli. presented in all of the source waters. Although no VOCs and estrogens were detected, nonyl phenol was presented in all of the water samples and it can not be effectively removed by the conventional treatment processes. In the first sampling, the five haloacetic acids (HAA5) in Feng-Shan Treatment Plant exceeded the guideline specified by USEPA (60μg/L); however, all of the other samples meet this recommended guideline. It was found that the current monitoring programs in water utilities in Taiwan were not suitable; the water quality items regularly analyzed on the monitoring systems were far less than those conducted in Osaka, Japan and Southern California, US. It is recommended that the utilities should enhance their multiple barrier water quality management systems. It is also recommended that differentiate the primary standards and secondary standards are not necessary. However, the EPA should seek cooperation from Water Resource Agency and negotiate with the utilities to establish an administrative plan for the violations of the water quality standards.

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