The mission of Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE) is to amplify women’s voices to eliminate the toxic chemicals that harm our health and communities.
Exposure to harmful chemicals in our environment and from the products we use daily is of real concern to women’s health.
While many of the efforts undertaken by WVE focus on exposure to harmful chemicals in consumer products, many of the contaminants and chemicals that most concern us also enter the environment through contaminated water.
And protecting clean water at its sources is essential to having clean water downstream and in our public water systems.
That is why a "yes" vote on Initiative 186 this November makes good, common sense to us.
This citizens’ ballot initiative simply says that new hard-rock mines in Montana will be developed more responsibly.
They will be developed without causing permanent water pollution that requires costly and imperfect water treatment that lasts forever.
I-186 will ensure that new mines are built, operated, closed and cleaned up without burdening Montanans with the risks and costs of water pollution that lasts for generations.
That includes voting.
When we go to the ballot box this fall, the essential need for clean water to ensure our health and happiness will be one of our priorities.

Gov.
Rick Snyder on Tuesday ordered that the state and local agencies develop a readiness plan for when chemical contamination is discovered in Michigan.
It was more than 20 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory of 70 parts per trillion.
Residents were ordered not to drink tap water, and bottled water was made available until the water system was connected to the Kalazmazoo system.
The contamination was discovered because Michigan went beyond a 2012 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule that requires testing for PFAS only in communities with 10,000 or more people.
"To ensure we continue to lead on this issue and protect all Michiganders, we need a framework that allows all agencies to respond quickly and effectively to contamination in our communities.
Michigan has 35 contamination sites — a list that includes Lake St. Clair and the Clinton River in Macomb County, a small community water supply in Parchment, residential wells around a Rockford tannery in West Michigan, and marshes, rivers and lakes around military bases in Oscoda, Alpena and Grayling.
The state has responded aggressively to the man-made threat in recent months and has been applauded by Alan Robertson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators.
But critics argue the response prior to 2016 was slowed by a lack of understanding of the chemicals’ widespread presence and dangerous health effects.
lfleming@detroitnews.com Twitter: @leonardnfleming

One of the contaminated PFAS sites first documented in Michigan was in Oscoda Township near the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base.
Water there is contaminated with PFAS.
“What about the water?
What people want to know is how government is going to fix it and whether there will be any long-term health problems?
“People have been drinking that water for decades and we don’t know the level 20, 30, 40 years ago that was in the groundwater.
Catherine Larive: “Clean it up.
Find a way to clean it up.” For years, it’s been known the area around the former Wurtsmith Air Force base was contaminated.
He notes Oscoda has had this contamination problem long before the lead contamination of Flint’s water.
MPART is the multi-agency Michigan PFAS Action Response Team put together last year.
Weed says Oscoda Township has gotten some small grants to extend municipal water service to some houses with contaminated wells.

New York State has awarded the Suffolk County Water Authority and East Hampton Town a $9.7 million grant to help pay to connect more than 400 homes in Wainscott to water mains to protect residents from groundwater contaminated with chemical compounds believed to be hazardous.
The main installations have already begun with funding from East Hampton Town, which will tax residents to recoup the costs of connecting their individual properties to the mains.
“That is help that we welcome as a small town confronted with water quality issues.
Water samples from 230 wells in southern Wainscott have been found to contain at least trace amounts of PFOS and PFOA, chemicals that were commonly used in fire-retardant foams for decades and have been found in water supplies surrounding airports around the nation.
The town has been supplying bottled water to Wainscott homeowners since last fall, has paid for some to install charcoal filtration systems, and has pledged to front the estimated $24 million cost of installing water mains to all homes south of East Hampton Airport.
The town will recoup the cost of connecting each individual home to the mains, amortized over 10 years, through town tax bills.
The town will be offering the amortized payment for connections until 2020, after which time a property owner would have to arrange for the hook-up and payment with SCWA directly.
Mr. Van Scoyoc lamented on Tuesday that even though the contamination and water testing has been widely publicized, there are still 91 property owners who have not had their wells tested for contamination.
“If you live in Wainscott south of the airport, you really should have your water tested,” he said.
The State Department of Environmental Conservation is conducting an investigation of possible sources of the contaminants and is expected to release a report on its finding later this month.

The water utility advised that the radium contamination is not at dangerous levels and residents do not need to use bottled water On Sept. 17, the Brookfield Water Utility notified residents of Brookfield, Wis., of radium contamination in drinking water exceeding federal standards.
The samples taken from the Bishops Woods well in May 2017, Nov. 2017, March 2018 and June 2018 revealed an average combined radium result of 6.75 pCi/L, exceeding the maximum contaminant level of 5 pCi/L, according to the letter the utility sent.
While the contamination level exceeds federal standards, the utility stressed that there is no immediate danger to people who may consume drinking water contaminated with radium-226 or radium-228.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, samples in Brookfield were 35% higher than the federal standard in the impacted neighborhoods.
However, radium is a naturally occurring substance in limestone layers of deep aquifer in Wisconsin and has surfaced in drinking water in the Great Lakes region in the past.
“We are working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to find out what our most effective and cost-effective option is to get in compliance with the radium standard,” said John Carlson, public engineer superintendent.
Other cities in Wisconsin have faced radium contamination in drinking water in the past, including Waukesha, Wis., which has begun switching from artesian wells to Lake Michigan for its municipal water supply.
Officials have advised that residents do not need to use bottled water, but those with specific health concerns should contact their doctor.

The high water that washed through Alamance County via the Haw River carried a lot of local sewage downstream, which can be a risk to the health of people living downstream and the environment, but it can be hard to know what’s in it.
More than 120,000 gallons of untreated sewage was reported spilled from waste-water systems in Alamance County.
“Unless you test, it’s more of a guessing game,” Sobsey said.
Raw sewage in the river is a big deal, said Sutton, but there is also industrial waste with heavy metals and other contaminants to think about.
“The heavy metals are a big concern, and, obviously, so are the bacteria and contaminates from the untreated sewage,” Sutton said.
While the town of Pittsboro draws drinking water from the Haw River, Sutton said, and so faces the possibility of contamination, Alamance County municipalities mostly get water from reservoirs like Lake Mackintosh and Graham-Mebane Lake, which, Sutton said are pretty well protected from whatever is flowing down the river.
“Alamance has such a great park system that flows along the Haw, Sutton said, “So Alamance County has a lot of tourism just based on the health of the river, so not only is it a threat for water used downstream, but it’s a threat for recreational users.” The Haw River water flows into Jordan Lake as well.
“A flood of organic matter in a waterway leads to huge increases in oxygen-consuming bacteria which are breaking the material down.
In addition, the organic matter feeds algae which can lead to large algal blooms, with the possibility of harmful blooms that produce toxins,” wrote Bridget Munger, Deputy Communications Director with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.
So far the Haw River Assembly hasn’t seen any fish kills in the lake, Sutton said, in part because the Army Corps of Engineers is managing water flows through the lake to keep those nutrients from building up.

Washington, DC – Today, Congress took bipartisan action to protect drinking water from contamination by passing legislation that directs the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow airports to use firefighting foam free of highly fluorinated chemicals or PFAS.
The use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam is responsible for drinking water contamination for millions of Americans.
The chemicals are extremely persistent and can stay in the human body for as long as eight years.
“Families across the country are being exposed to these highly toxic chemicals in their drinking water.
Congress has taken an important step toward ending the use of PFAS foams at commercial airports,” said Safer Chemicals Healthy Families Director Liz Hitchcock.
“We look forward to working with Congress and the Administration to take many more steps forward to tackle this public health crisis.” Included in legislation to fund the Federal Aviation Administration and to strengthen disaster programs that passed the Senate today is a provision that allows commercial airports to choose to use firefighting foams that do not contain PFAS chemicals.
This provision is an important step forward because much of the drinking water contamination is found near airports – military and commercial – that use PFAS-based aqueous film-forming foam.
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families applauded the bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers who led negotiations of the final package: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.); Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.
); House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Ranking Member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.); and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
The group also thanked Michigan Senator Gary Peters and Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan for their advocacy on the PFAS provision.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California has been working on improving language access to water system information so that people will know if their water is free of toxic contaminants.
By law, all water systems are required to send out annual consumer confidence reports that notify residents about their drinking water quality.
These water reports do three important things: (1) let people know about possible drinking water contamination, (2) describe any health and safety violations, and (3) provide notice about upcoming meetings where people can speak directly to decision-makers about their water quality.
However, nearly 7 million people in California, more than any other state, have a limited ability to read, write, speak, or understand English.
Each year, it provides a water report template on its agency website, for use by systems throughout the state and which smaller water systems rely on.
The sentence, loosely translated, reads: This report contains very important information about your drinking water.
Providing an English-only template harms already vulnerable communities by limiting their access to important information about their water.
Safe Water is a Human Right In our letter, we asked the SWRCB to provide translated templates that reflect California’s diversity — and they listened.
We’re proud to report that 11 public water systems throughout Fresno, Madera, and Tulare counties are now using these translated templates.
Safe water is a human right, and we will continue working to expand language access across California.

Union Leader Correspondent PORTSMOUTH — The city will be moving forward with the latest technology as officials here work to filter out contamination from drinking water at Pease International Tradeport.
The Haven Well was taken offline immediately when levels of PFOS were found to be more than 12 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory.
The Haven Well is still offline.
On Monday, Deputy Director of Public Works Brian Goetz updated the city council on work planned at the Grafton Road Water Treatment Facility which provides drinking water in Portsmouth.
Goetz said the current plan is to add two resin filters and a granular activated carbon filter at the facility.
Goetz explained resin filters last longer but target specific contaminants.
The carbon filter will be able to treat some of the other legacy contaminants which remain in the water long after they were introduced.
“We are still very concerned about any legacy contaminants there,” Goetz said.
The Haven Well is expected to be back online in 2021, Goetz said.
Meanwhile, federal officials from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry are planning to test people exposed to contaminated drinking water at Pease.

All of this is why Maynard’s family doesn’t drink the tap water.
Some county residents say they bathe their babies in bottled water to avoid exposing them to the tap water; others store jugs of water near the bathroom in case the tap runs dry in the middle of a shower.
The decades-long problems in Martin County illustrate just how complex the issues are.
"The treatment plant operators can’t control the quality of the water in the pipes if they cannot keep the pipes intact," Brion says.
The Martin County Water District, the private utility that manages the county’s water, reported 29 line breaks in 2017 and advised residents to boil their water in case of contamination.
Since the Martin County Water District is privately owned, it falls largely outside state jurisdiction: Aside from investigations, recommendations and fines, there’s little that state governing bodies can do.
"This isn’t just confined to Martin County.
We have dilapidated infrastructure all over this country," she says.
"The people of this county did not create this mess, but we’re the ones who are going to have to fix it."
Maynard is doing just that, by, among other things, running for local government.