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Good Morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am Angela Logomasini, Director of Risk and Environmental policy with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). CEI is a public policy group that focuses on promoting market-based solutions to policy problems.

Today, I am going to offer a rather different view on this issue, one that I haven’t seen others offer anywhere. Everyone is suggesting that the District of Columbia’s recent activities related to lead levels in D.C. drinking water are a result of gross mismanagement. Frankly, the news coverage has been so intensely critical that one is almost led into thinking that D.C. officials were engaged in a plot to allow residents to slowly be poisoned. Following this line of reasoning, the next common conclusion that everyone seems to be making is that federal regulators must now search around the nation for similarly irresponsible public officials who are doing the same thing to their residents.