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A Governing investigation finds that "when pollution crops up, governments overreact." Determined to clean up everything, public officials tend to spend more taxpayers money than necessary, the story reveals. Now a growing number of regulators look at the need to re-evaluate this approach by initiating changes in state laws and pollution standards. The methods of re-evaluation include cost-benefit analyses and comparative risk projects involving citizens. To illustrate the issue, the reporter points to the case of Columbus, Ohio, where local government may be forced by the Environmental Protection Agency to spend more than $1 billion in order to comply with national pollution control standards regarding drinking water. In fact, local health officials figured out that the amount of chemicals in the water is so minuscule that only one resident would die every 208 years from drinking Columbus' water.

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