I Spoke Up for Safe Drinking Water. EPA Removed Me.
Last week, EPA informed me that my “services are no longer needed” on the National Drinking Water Advisory Council.
I served on the National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) as a special government employee starting in 2021. The council brings together water utility leaders, state agencies, public health experts, and advocates to advise EPA on drinking water policy. It is one of the few formal spaces where community-centered, public-health-first perspectives can sit alongside technical and regulatory decision-makers to present recommendations to the EPA. In 2024, EPA told me they valued my service so much that they wanted me back for a second term.
Last July, EPA told me I was under investigation for my “potential signature” on a petition and barred me from participating in the NDWAC meeting where they discussed repealing PFAS regulations. EPA never identified the petition, but the timing aligned with my signing the Stand up for Science petition supporting EPA staff and science-based public health protections.
No one ever interviewed me for my investigation. No questions. No process. Months later, I was simply removed.
This post is about what it means when people working to protect public health are sidelined for speaking up.
Silence is dangerous in drinking water.
Silence is how lead exposure persisted for decades, including in Flint, where officials ignored the evidence until my work helped force it into the open.
Silence is how microbial contamination is downplayed and allowed to continue without intervention.
Silence is how communities are told everything is fine when it isn’t.
Public health protection has never advanced because everyone stayed comfortable.
Safe drinking water depends on people being willing to raise uncomfortable facts. Engineers, scientists, and public health professionals have to be able to say when policies increase risk, when data are being ignored, and when communities are being failed.
If signing a public statement asking EPA to stand up for science is enough to trigger an opaque investigation and removal from a federal advisory body, the message to others is clear: stay quiet.
That message should worry all of us.
During my time on the council, my focus was simple: center public health and community reality in drinking water policy. Stronger protections. Transparency. Real accountability. Making sure the experience of living with unsafe water was not buried under compliance narratives.
That work doesn’t stop because my seat was taken away.
I will keep working with communities, utilities, and advocates to push for drinking water systems that are truly protective of health, not just compliant on paper. I will keep speaking plainly when risks are being minimized or ignored.
Safe drinking water is not a partisan issue. It is a public health obligation.
You can read more about my removal here:
E&E News: https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-ousts-water-council-member-who-signed-dissent-letter/
Planet Detroit: https://planetdetroit.org/2026/01/betanzo-removed-drinking-water-council/