The cheryl and Philip Milstein family. Sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. Dr. P. Roy vagelos and diana t. Vagelos. The j. P. B. Foundation. The Anderson Family fund. Rosalind p. Walter, in memory of abby m. Oneill. Barbara hope zuckerberg. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. From the tisch wnet studios at Lincoln Center in new york, hari sreenivasan. Sreenivasan good evening, and thank you for joining us. Republicans in congress are on track to pass one of the biggest overhauls to the tax code in more than 30 years this coming week. On the brink of his first major legislative victory, President Trump predicted today the tax bill would benefit the middle class and spur economic growth. Were really going to start to rock. We need this as our final push, and youre going to see some numbers that are great. But most importantly, youre going to see great job numbers. Sreenivasan the final details of the bill were released yesterday by Republican Leaders after the house and Senate Versions of the tax bill were reconciled. The 1. 46 trillion plan includes nearly doubling the standard deduction; cutting some individual tax rates, including the top rate from 39. 6 to 37 ; slashing the Corporate Tax rate from 35 to 21 ; reducing several common deductions including state and local taxes, now capped at 10,000; and repealing the Affordable Care acts individual healthcare mandate in 2019. Two senators who were wavering on supporting the plan, marco rubio of florida and bob corker of tennessee, the lone senator to vote against the bill earlier this month, both confirmed they would support it. Democrats in the senate are likely to unanimously oppose the legislation, and republicans can only afford two defections in passing the bill. The delivery of the 1,000page g. O. P. Tax plan late yesterday marks an important step toward the first major legislative victory for the Trump Administration. The final vote on the bill is expected next week before heading to the president for signature. For some analysis of who won and who lost, financially and politically, i am joined from washington, d. C. , by politico reporter Aaron Lorenzo. Lets be optimistic. Who fares better because of this tax plan . I think a lot of taxpayers are going to feel ultimately that theyre doing better. At least for a while. Some of these individual tax cuts that they dont last. They expire after eight years in a lot of cases. But at least in the first couple of years of the new tax bill, theres going to be a much higher standard deduction, and theyre going to have a lower tax lesof their income is going to be taxable going forward, again, least for these first few years. Sreenivasan so instead of trying to save all your receiptes of charitable contributions and so forth, you just get a higher bar that you automatically say to the government, deduct this. Thats right. A lot fewer of us will itemize, like you said wont have to save those receipts and tab everything up at the end of the year. And so the vacation of this bill think that thats going to be theres a lot of upside to that. Sreenivasan okay, lets talk a little bit about businesses. Theyve been a huge part of this conversation. There was a lot of discussion about lowering the Corporate Tax rate down. What was the end result . So the end result is 21 for the Corporate Tax rate. Thats down from 35 today. Sreenivasan and is that going to make a difference in all of these companies who are keeping large hordes of cash offshore. Does it make america more competitive . Does it drive them to pull theiring about businessback into the United States . Thats certainly part of the design for this. A lot less business income will be taxable, and so the idea is to motivate those companies to do things here in the u. S. More. The lower Corporate Tax rate is paired with some changes on how International Income is taxed, and all of those things combined, the idea is to make u. S. Companies operate more in the u. S. And when they operate globally, do so more competitively. Sreenivasan there was also a lot of tension between states along the coast, new york, new jersey, california, and how they would be impacted negatively by this. So what ended up happening . Those are areas where people, particularly highincome people, might actually not come out ahead with the tax changes. When we talked earlier about itemizing theyre now going to have a ceiling, or a cap on the bigbucket items that they typically itemize. So your state and local taxes, that includes property taxes, that includes income taxes that you pay at the state or local level, that includes sales taxes, too. So a combination of these things now, theres a 10,000 ceiling on them. Sreenivasan and one thing, regardless of party striems that people do agree on is that this is going to increase the deficit significantly. Yes. There really is no official estimate or analysis that shows that this does not increase red ink. And, again, earlier, i mentioned to you that some of these things some of these provisions are temporary. So if you operate on the assumption that they get extended or made permanent down the road, theres a cost to that, too. And that, also, adds to that deficit issue down the road. Sreenivasan so the deficit, as of if plan, is 1. 4, 1. 5 trillion. Right, thats correct. Thats what the budget plan allowed for, and they pretty much came in right at that level a hair underneath it, but right there. Sreenivasan Aaron Lorenzo of politico joining us from washington. Thanks so much. Thank you. Sreenivasan in southern california, new mandatory evacuations have been declared as winds blow the raging wildfires closer to santa barbara. Residents in the towns of montecito and neighboring summerland have been told to leave. Since the fire began on december 4, 95,000 people have been placed under mandatory evacuation. Some of the biggest names in the Entertainment Industry are taking action to combat sexual misconduct. Yesterday, top executives of nearly every major hollywood studio, tv network and record label announced a new commission to be led by anita hill. In a statement, star wars producer Kathleen Kennedy said the commission on Sexual Harassment and advancing equality in the workplace will seek a comprehensive strategy to address the complex and interrelated causes of the problems of parity and power. The relatives of three victims of last months mass shooting at a church in sutherland springs, texas, are suing the Sporting Goods chain that sold the gunman the firearms he used to kill more than two dozen people. The lawsuit accuses Academy Sports and outdoors of negligence and seeks 25 million in damages. The Sporting Goods chain has confirmed that it sold Devin Patrick kelley two firearms from its stores in san antonio, but insists that it complied with all gun laws. Read the details of the g. O. P. s final tax plan at www. Pbs. Org newshour. When we turn on the faucet, we expect the water that comes out to be safe. Water providers around the country test for hundreds of contaminants known to be harmful to human health and try to keep them below dangerous levels. Despite the testing, there are some things that are getting through. In tonights signature segment, we look at a chemical called 1,4dioxane. The Environmental Protection agency says its likely to be carcinogenic, and its been on the radar of Drinking Water regulators since at least 2009. However, it remains almost completely unregulated in Drinking Water. Tonight, we begin the first of two reports on Drinking Water and the challenge of making sure that what comes out of our taps is safe to use. Imagine the water filter on your kitchen counter. What were standing next to are just a few thousand times bigger. This is raw water going out to each of these two vessels that are filled with virgin, granular activated carbon. Sreenivasan were at a Water Treatment well in greenlawn, new york, and my guide is jason hime, a Public Health engineer with the Suffolk County department of health. This is the last step before its sent out to thousands of homes. But even before it gets here, the water, which is pumped from more than 300 feet underground, is treated with chemicals like chlorine and is adjusted for the correct ph level. This equipment here monitors the ph level as it goes out to the consumer. Sreenivasan so, this is monitoring the chlorine thats going in the system, and this is just trying to hit seven exactly. Less than sevens acidic, more than sevens where. Slightly basic. Just over seven is the goal. Sreenivasan yeah, its Like High School science class. Right. Sreenivasan all the county well water is regularly tested here at the Public Health lab. Suffolk county goes far beyond the nearly 100 contaminants regulated by the u. S. Safe Drinking Water act. But despite the treatment and testing, theres at least one important, unregulated chemical sliding through, and the Environmental Protection agency says its likely to be carcinogenic to humans. Were analyzing for close to 300 different parameters including volatile organic chemicals, semivolatile organic chemicals, pesticides, radionuclides, inorganics, metals, bacteria, pharmaceutical and personal Care Products, and several emerging contaminants of concern such as 1,4dioxane. Sreenivasan 1,4dioxane is a chemical found in degreasers, paint strippers and household products, and its one of about 85,000 chemicals in use in the United States that are not 9regulated in Drinking Water. In 2009, the e. P. A. Added 1,4dioxane to a list of contaminants to possibly regulate and required every large water provider in the country to test for it. Its the first step in regulating a new contaminant under the safe Drinking Water act, and tests between 2013 and 2015 showed 1,4dioxane is in Drinking Water around the country. In fact, Water Systems in 27 states, serving more than seven million people, had levels of 1,4dioxane above 0. 35 parts per billion. Thats the level that the e. P. A. Calculates poses a lifetime, oneinamillion increased chance of developing cancer. People say its oneinamillion chance. Well, maybe that sounds great unless youre the one or your Family Member is the one. Sreenivasan Adrienne Esposito runs Citizens Campaign for the environment. Its based on long island, which was found to be a hot spot for 1,4dioxane. 73 of water authorities here had levels of 1,4dioxane above that longterm cancer risk, compared with just 7 nationwide. Long islands industrial legacy, with its 34 superfund sites, is partly to blame; it can take decades for pollution to make its way down to the underground aquifer that supplies long islands water. The majority of Suffolk County is also unsewered and household products like detergents, where smaller amounts of 1,4dioxane are present as an unlabeled byproduct, end up in septic tanks and can leach into the groundwater. There unfortunately and alarmingly is a gigantic gap between what we know and what we dont know. So, we have a lot of water suppliers. Theyre very judicious. They follow the law. They test more frequently than theyre required to. But theres literally thousands of chemicals that are not being tested for and may or may not be in our Drinking Water. Sreenivasan the personal Care Products council, a trade group that represents cosmetic and personal care companies, declined an interview request but said in a statement, in part, 1,4dioxane is a byproduct that can form in trace amounts during the manufacturing process but that levels present in finished products are minimized and do not present a hazard under conditions of use. The american chemistry council, an Industry Group representing chemical companies, declined an interview request but said in a statement, in part where detected, 1,4dioxane has been found in low levels that do not present significant risk or cause for alarm. Adrienne esposito takes issue with that, in part because 1,4dioxane is present in so many places. So, were getting an exposure level through water, but then also an additional exposure to other products that were using every day. Its the multiple exposure through many sources that we believe puts us at risk. Sreenivasan the e. P. A. Declined pbs newshour weekends interview request but said in a statement, in part, e. P. A. Will consider occurrence data along with Health Effects information as part of the agencys regulatory determinations process for 1,4dioxane, adding, e. P. A. Anticipates completing the next regulatory determinations in 2021. Remember, the e. P. A. Identified 1,4dioxane as a chemical it may regulate in 2009 and wont rule on it until at least 2021. History suggests regulation is unlikely. In the 21 years since the safe Drinking Water act was updated, the e. P. A. s process has not led to the regulation of a single new contaminant. We have 85,000 chemicals used in commerce today. How many are we going to have in the next five or ten years . Sreenivasan judith enck was an e. P. A. Regional administrator from 2009 to 2017 under president obama. The dirty little secret in the Drinking Water area is that for most of the chemicals used in commerce, our water supply is never tested, its never monitored. Its a short list of what is looked at. And its impossible to test for all of them, but i think we can be sensible about it. Sreenivasan enck is not inspired by the direction the e. P. A. Is headed. In july, President Trump nominated toxicologist Michael Dourson to lead the e. P. A. s chemical safety program. While working as a consultant for a manufacturer that uses 1,4dioxane, dourson coauthored a 2014 paper that found the safe level of the chemical was 1,000 times higher than the e. P. A. s oneinamillion cancer risk, a point that was raised during his confirmation hearing. In late october, the Senate Committee on environment and public works narrowly approved doursons nomination on a party line vote, but earlier this week, dourson withdrew himself from consideration after it appeared he might not win full senate confirmation. Given the situation in washington, its imperative that the states act. Sreenivasan which is exactly whats been happening. Six states have already regulated 1,4dioxane, and new york may be the next. Requiring testing for an emerging contaminant. Sreenivasan in october, the new york Drinking WaterQuality Council met for the first time. Its made up of state environmental and health officials, scientists and water providers. The council is required to recommend a maximum allowable level of 1,4dioxane and two other contaminants by next year. Brad hutton is the Deputy Commissioner of Public Health for the new York Department of health. While weve requested strongly for the federal government to establish a unified national standard, which would be preferable, in the absence of one, new york has stepped up to establish its own level. Sreenivasan but deciding how much of a contaminant like 1,4dioxane is safe and how to potentially remove it isnt easy. Everyone has a different perception of risk. If we could wave a wand and spend a dime, we would do it to prevent all of those cancers. But its typically much more complicated. Sreenivasan and once new york figures out the maximum contaminant level, potentially treating it wont be cheap. I could see our water rates going up 50 if they set this as low as some other states have actually looked at. Sreenivasan Dennis Kelleher is an engineer who represents the long island water conference, an association of public water providers and Drinking Water professionals. He says water authorities are caught in the middle when it comes to unregulated contaminants like 1,4dioxane. The public is hearing about it and saying, i dont want it in my Drinking Water. And were saying, well, we dont know at what level is acceptable. And to make things even worse, there isnt an acceptable, approvable treatment system that we can install if we needed to put something in. So, as the waters flowing through, the radicals are destroying the contaminant immediately. Sreenivasan joe roccaro is a Water Quality engineer for the Suffolk County water authority. This is one of the first fullscale pilot projects in the country to remove 1,4dioxane from water. Its going in right here. Sreenivasan 1,4dioxane passes right through traditional treatment and filtering technologies, so the utility has been testing a method called advanced oxidation process. A chemical is added to the water, and its then run past 72 u. V. Lamps, which strips out the 1,4dioxane. While the state and county have yet to officially give the go ahead to put it online, tests show it reduces 1,4dioxane below detectable levels. But the system isnt cheap; treating just the Suffolk County wells that are above the oneinamillion cancer risk level, it would cost about 155 million. Activists working to limit this chemical say its worth it and that federal and state regulators need to take a more active role. We need a Public Health standard, not one driven by the economy or the economics of the filtration. We need one driven by what protects us from getting cancer. The goal is to keep people healthy, and thats going to cost money. Im sorry, but its not free sreenivasan while this u. V. Filtering system may work for 1,4dioxane, for water authorities like Suffolk County, its not easy keeping up with new threats to Drinking Water. As we move forward, theres no black box, you know. Theres no magic treatment thats going to remove everything. And i mean, thats the bottom line. Sreenivasan it has been 12 weeks since Hurricane Maria devastated puerto rico, and, as of today, the island is only generating electricity at 65 capacity. A new interactive report from the Washington Post takes a close look at how the lack of electricity continues to dramatically impact life for the 3. 4 million u. S. Citizens who live there. Arelis hernandez is one of the reporters on the story, and she joins me now from washington, d. C. It seems your stories are ones of people and how theyre just adapting to life when it comes to three months without power. Well, right. I mean, the storm in and of itself was pretty catastrophic, right. The storm was about two times as large as the island itself in land mass. But what came afterwards in terms of having to deal with the fact that you dont have power, that your access to clean water is limited, that everyday tasks had become far more difficult than they were prestorm, that story was continuing and it was aggravating. It was one that my colleagues and i thought was really important to tell. Sreenivasan one of the characters that you started out with was a School Teacher who had gone to this very school when she was a child. What was very hard to witness is that she actually goes to class every day, even though there are no students that show up. Right. This happened with a lot of teachers across the island. They were ordered back to classrooms about midoctober, basically to check in on the condition of the explooms to get them ready for students. The problem was in some places they didnt have water, and you cant have kids inside of schools without water. Sreenivasan and this is a woman who still has to go. She literally goes to the Mountain Side and fetches buckets of water for how she lives on a daily basis. Yes, absolutely. With some of the mudslides and landslides that were taking place in this particular mountainous community disrupting water service. A lot of the people who live in remote Rural Communities have to go to their local Mountain Spring to get water for everything. Sreenivasan you also talk about kind of a gap generation, where theyre not so tine they theyre seeing kind of the fun in the upside down stuff, but theyre also not old enough where theyve dealt with how to deal with this recovery. And it seems like theyre in kind of different states of almost trauma. Right, no, we talked to several teenagers who were sort of in this weird place emotionally where they really didnt know whether what direction to go in. I mean, some kids are figuring out, but particularly for those seniors in high school who are trying to move on with their lives and have seen so many of their relatives and their neighbors also move to the United States, it puts them in a weird place. Sreenivasan you also profiled a small business, or a couple that run a small food truck, and all of a sudden, they have this additional cost of having this generator and it eat into their profits. They have a generator that goes on nonstop. They have a freezer at home that keep the dough for the fried fritters. And they have to make them ahead of time, put them in the freezer and hope to god the generator doesnt die on her. Theyre the beacon of normalcy to the town we went to. Theyre part of that community. They grew up there, and they realized that far more important than making a profit at this point for them was to be there for their people. Sreenivasan all right, arelis hernandez, just one of the three reporters from the Washington Post who worked on this, along with a lot of other staff in laying this out. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. This is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. Sreenivasan the Trump Administration wanted to make it easier for more companies to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage. However, a federal judge in philadelphia temporarily stopped the newly proposed rules yesterday. The Affordable Care act provision that required companies to cover Birth Control at no additional cost already had exemptions for religious organizations and some private companies. The Trump Administration argued they needed to expand the number of corporations exempted to protect a narrow class of sincere religious and moral objectors. Judge wendy beetlestone, an obama appointee, said in her injunction that this rule quote conjured up a world where a Government Entity is empowered to impose its own version of morality on each one of us. That cannot be right. And today, the first legal same sex marriage took place in australia. The ceremony of lauren price and amy laker came just over a week after australia became the 26th country to legalize samesex marriage when its parliament approved it by an overwhelming majority. A threemilewide asteroid is making a close pass by earth tonight. Not to worry, its still 6. 4 million miles from earth. Thats the closest since 1974. The asteroid, named 3200 phaethon, orbits earth every 523 days, but its distance to our planet varies each time. Nasa calls it potentially hazardous because someday it may impact earth. And the New York Times today revealed the existence of a secret Pentagon Program to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects. The pentagon acknowledged the existence of the 22 million program, saying it began in 2007. Backed by thensenate majority leader harry reid, the funding lasted five years. Its director resigned earlier this month because of what he says was excessive secrecy. Sreenivasan finally tonight, nevada congressman ruben kihuen says he will not seek reelection in 2018. Yesterday, the House Ethics Committee announced it would investigate Sexual Harassment claims against the 37yearold freshman democrat. In a statement to the las vegas reviewjournal, kihuen denied the allegations. Thats all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. Im hari sreenivasan. Thanks for watching. Have a good night. Captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org pbs newshour weekend is made possible by bernard and irene schwartz. The cheryl and Philip Milstein family. Sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. Dr. P. Roy vagelos and diana t. Vagelos. The j. P. B. Foundation. The Anderson Family fund. Rosalind p. Walter, in memory of abby m. Oneill. Barbara hope zuckerberg. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Superstar Tenor Andrea Bocelli travels to hollywood to perform some of the greatest melodies from the silver screen. Moon river relive oscarwinning songs. Wider than a mile movie musicals. Maria classic themes. [ singing in italian ] and epic songs. [ singing in italian ] join us when the stars come out