‘Don’t drink water’ advice was prudent
originally posted on June 12, 2016
When the general manager of West Morgan-East Lawrence Water and Sewer Authority said this month his customers should not drink or cook with the water, he was immediately attacked from all sides. Officials at a news conference denounced Don Sims’ recommendation, calling it irresponsible grandstanding. He was inciting panic, they said. Even Gov. Robert Bentley weighed in.
Had Sims come up with the suggestion on his own, he would deserve the criticism.
Sims’ recommendation the authority’s customers not drink the water, however, followed a May 19 health advisory by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The advisory explained that numerous studies show health risks for people who drink water on a long-term basis that is contaminated with more than 70 parts per trillion of two chemicals, PFOA and PFOS. It instructed water authorities that exceed these levels — and West Morgan-East Lawrence does — to advise their customers of the risks and explain what actions are being taken to reduce the contamination.
The notice, the EPA instructed, should “identify options that consumers may consider to reduce risk, such as seeking an alternative drinking water source.”
The EPA also outlined the health risks studies have determined are associated with the chemicals, and they’re alarming.
“These studies,” the EPA advisory explained, “indicate that exposure to PFOA and PFOS over certain levels may result in adverse health effects, including developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breastfed infants (e.g., low birth weight, accelerated puberty, skeletal variations), cancer (e.g., testicular, kidney), liver effects (e.g., tissue damage), immune effects (e.g., antibody production and immunity), thyroid effects and other effects (e.g., cholesterol changes).”
In truth, this was not new information. The same studies are the reason a fish advisory has been in effect for years in much of Wheeler Reservoir. PFOS levels are so high in largemouth bass, the Alabama Department of Public Health has explained, that they should be eaten sparingly or not at all.
The complaint by some officials apparently was that EPA did not explicitly recommend against drinking the water, but Sims did.
It’s an odd complaint.
The EPA issued a health advisory. It set out the risks in exhaustive detail. It instructed authorities to notify customers of the risk, and that they may want to consider alternative water sources. For anyone whose head is not deep in the sand, that’s a recommendation against long-term consumption to water with excess levels of PFOA and PFOS.
But not many people read EPA health advisories. They do, as it turns out, listen to Sims. And for officials who want uninformed but happy constituents, that was a problem.
So did Sims create panic, as he was accused of doing?
There was no looting. There were no riots; not even any protests. The only actions that resulted from his announcement were sensible ones: People bought bottled water. Volunteers donated bottled water. Environmental officials redoubled their efforts to reduce the contamination levels of the tap water.
If officials believe the EPA was wrong to issue the advisory, if they believe the studies upon which the EPA relied were flawed, then they should attack the EPA. Blaming Sims for communicating the EPA’s findings to the customers who rely on him for safe water was unfair.
Source of Meeker water contamination still a mystery
originally posted on June 11, 2016
After more than two months of struggling to eliminate a water contamination at Meeker Elementary School, the Ames School District cut into the new school’s water pipes in hopes of finding the bacteria source of the problem, but district officials say they didn’t find what they expected.
“I was really hoping we would find the source,” said Gerry Peters, director of facilities planning and management.
Peters said they had isolated an area of the pipe where they suspected the source of the contamination might be, but they didn’t find anything. Now with the pipes open, he is moving forward with sanitizing the pipes, which seems to be producing favorable results after initial water testing.
The bacteria total coliform was first discovered at the school during a routine water quality sampling on March 30. While it was low level of bacteria, two staff restrooms, a drinking fountain and the art room tested positive for total coliform. The rest of the school tested negative for the bacteria but students and staff drank bottled water through the end of the school year as a precaution.
Water and pollution control director John Dunn with the city has previously said total coliform is not going to make people sick and the test did not include e. Coli, indicating the contamination is not a sewage problem.
Since first discovering the contamination, Peters said they have chlorinated the pipes as least a dozen times. Peters said typically chlorination is successful at eliminating the bacteria but said it can be a complex problem so sometimes the chlorine is unsuccessful.
“It has been a great learning experience,” Peters said.
He said he has reached out to anyone and everyone to try and tap into their knowledge on how to resolve the issue and said he hasn’t found anyone that has dealt with this problem any differently.
Although it is still unclear when the contamination will be fully resolved, Peters said he hopes it will be “as soon as possible.”
“I’ve devoted a lot of time to this,” he said.
Think that water you’re drinking is safe? Think again
by Brady Dennis, June 11, 2016
For all the pathogens and chemicals monitored by the federal government to protect drinking water, a far broader universe of “emerging contaminants” is going unregulated.
The Environmental Protection Agency keeps tabs on scores of substances that have surfaced in water systems around the country, with the aim of restricting those that endanger public health. But partly because the rules that the agency must follow are complicated and contentious, officials have failed to successfully regulate any new contaminant in two decades.
Only once since the 1990s has the EPA come close to imposing a new standard – for perchlorate, a chemical found in explosives, road flares, rocket fuel and, it turns out, the drinking water of upwards of 16 million people.
The years of inaction, critics say, have left many Americans at risk from substances that few even realize might be in their water in the first place.
“We live in a country where we’ve made a fundamental decision that chemicals are safe unless they’re proven to be bad,” said Jeffrey Griffiths, a public health professor at Tufts University School of Medicine who studies waterborne diseases. “We have this system which is biased toward the presumption of innocence.”
Here in North Carolina, one of the contaminants on the government’s watch list has been found in rivers and streams on which more than a million people depend.
Since 2013, Detlef Knappe and a team of researchers at N.C. State University have logged hundreds of miles as they gathered samples along the Cape Fear River basin. From Greensboro in the heart of the state to the coastal city of Wilmington, they have identified troubling levels of “1,4-dioxane,” a byproduct of plastics manufacturing that can be found in everything from paint strippers and varnishes to detergents, shampoos and cosmetics. The EPA has deemed it a “likely human carcinogen,” although limited data exist on the cancer risks it poses for people.
“1,4-dioxane really has no business being in the water,” said Knappe, an environmental engineering professor who has worked with state regulators and the National Science Foundation to dig deeper into the issue. “This has probably been going on for decades, but no one has really looked at it. . . . We only find what we look for.”
The EPA keeps a list of about 100 unregulated contaminants that have made their way into water supplies from industrial sites and other sources. Every five years, the agency updates a shorter lineup of chemicals that it thinks should be tracked and studied and requires utilities to do testing.
The current inventory includes two viruses and 28 chemicals, including 1,4-dioxane. The goal is to eventually regulate those that pose the greatest risk to public health.
But critics say that regulators should be moving far more assertively, even as scientists continue researching the short- and long-term health impacts. They blame both the system set up by Congress as well as the agency’s glacial pace.
“For an agency to be unable to adopt a single new standard in 20 years is inexcusable,” said Erik Olson, health and environment program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s a combination of a bad law and very bad implementation.”
In the wake of the lead crisis in Flint, Mich., and other problems in communities elsewhere, many people are increasingly wary of what flows from the faucets of their homes and schools – and whether the federal government is doing enough to safeguard drinking water. In April, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that more than 60 percent of Americans rate the government’s efforts as just fair or poor.
In 1974, the newly enacted Safe Drinking Water Act gave the EPA broad authority to monitor and regulate the nation’s public drinking-water supplies. The agency adopted existing standards covering nearly two dozen microbial and inorganic chemical contaminants. When regulators took too long to expand that number, Congress made clear in 1986 that it wanted faster action.
A bipartisan majority passed additional legislation requiring the agency to establish drinking-water limits for scores of contaminants – including bacteria such as legionella and chemical compounds from acrylamide to xylene. Lawmakers also directed the agency to set up a system for monitoring still-unregulated contaminants.
The result over the next decade was health-based thresholds for more than 85 substances, including a range of disinfection byproducts and chemicals known to increase the risks of kidney damage, high blood pressure and cancer, among other conditions.
Those efforts prompted complaints from some local water officials about the increased costs and time needed to comply with the wave of new regulations. Utilities faced testing and treatment requirements for a growing list of contaminants – some that appeared only in certain parts of the country and some that scientists were still studying to determine their public health implications.
In 1996, Congress intervened again. This time lawmakers directed the EPA to do detailed cost-benefit analyses on additional contaminants that it sought to restrict. The agency also had to ensure that sufficient science existed to establish the public-health risks of a particular substance before attempting to regulate it.
“It created this Herculean set of tasks that EPA had to go through before they could adopt any new standards,” Olson said.
In the 20 years since, the EPA has come close to successfully regulating only one new chemical contaminant in drinking water. In 2011, reversing a Bush administration decision, the agency announced its intention to set a federal standard for perchlorate. Exposure to the chemicalcan disrupt thyroid function in humans.
Yet the agency still has not put any limits in place. The National Resources Defense Council recently sued, saying that the EPA’s inaction could be exposing children and pregnant women to harm.
Joel Beauvais, who heads the EPA’s Office of Water, acknowledged that the agency’s pace in regulating new chemicals had slowed, in part because of the system mandated by Congress. “It’s a rather intensive process to get one of these drinking-water regulations across the finish line,” he said.
The law demands that the agency move deliberately – and there are reasons for that, he said. A substance may occur in only a very small number of drinking-water systems, for instance, or it may not have been detected at levels of concern. Before the EPA imposes new burdens on thousands of water systems, it must prove that there is a meaningful opportunity to improve public health.
“These are very consequential regulations,” he said. “They are consequential from a health perspective. They are consequential from an economic perspective.”
Beauvais noted that the EPA has updated standards for certain contaminants as well as revised other rules, such as those for treating wastewater, in ways that help contain the number of overall contaminants in drinking water. Officials also have said that they are exploring new approaches and could begin regulating entire groups of substances rather than targeting one at a time.
The agency has issued numerous health advisories – most recently for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a potentially toxic compound that has turned up in many water systems – that can prompt state and local officials to take action or at least notify residents about contaminants. Ultimately, though, the advisories are unenforceable.
The American Water Works Association says that the EPA should winnow its list to focus on a handful of chemicals that pose the biggest public-health concerns.
“In a resource-constrained world, it’s hard to make progress spreading your resources broadly,” said Steve Via, the association’s director of federal relations. “The way the current process is running, with large numbers of contaminants on the list you don’t get enough focus to achieve progress. When you don’t achieve progress, folks ask if the process is working.”
Congress on Tuesday passed a sweeping revision of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which covers thousands of chemicals in products as diverse as sippy cups, paint thinners and permanent-press clothing. The overhaul will give the EPA the power to require health and safety data for untested chemicals and to prevent substances from reaching the market – and, ultimately, drinking-water sources – if they have not been determined to be safe. Implementation will take years, however.
“Prevention is an incredibly important issue for the country over time,” Beauvais said. “If we regulate more on the front end, we’re less likely to have contamination from chemicals with adverse health effects on the back end.”
In North Carolina, environmental officials published a report earlier this year detailing a year’s worth of sampling for 1,4-dioxane within the Cape Fear River basin. It highlighted numerous “hot spots” for the contaminant located immediately downstream of wastewater facilities, suggesting that manufacturers or other industrial operators were sending it into municipal sewers. Current water treatments don’t effectively remove the chemical.
“People are understandably concerned,” said Steve Drew, Greensboro’s director of water resources. “[But] in the absence of enforceable limits, what is a water system to do?”
His department and other downstream communities responded by launching a sort of detective operation. They tested hundreds of miles of sewer lines and met with business owners to track down the possible sources of 1,4-dioxane.
“We got it down to about a half dozen or so businesses – a couple that had very high levels of 1,4-dioxane discharged into our system,” Drew said. “These companies are not even thinking about it because they aren’t regulated on it.”
He said the companies have been “very diligent” in trying to alter supply chains and remove the chemical voluntarily from their manufacturing process. There are early signs that those efforts are slowly beginning to lower 1,4-dioxane levels in the river basin.
But if companies balk, Drew has no way to force them to cooperate.
“Right now,” he said, “it’s completely dependent on good relationships, and ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ ”
Virginia Tech researchers release early results of Orleans water sampling
by Brian Molongoski, originally posted on June 11, 2016
Virginia Tech researchers have released early results from its lead testing operation in the town of Orleans, where several residents have experienced water contamination by salt.
Road salt from a nearby state Department of Transportation salt storage depot on Route 12 in Collins Landing has long been blamed by locals and lawmakers alike.
In April, the researchers provided 125 sampling kits for private well users in Orleans to test their drinking water for possible lead contamination. In a release sent to the Times by the college, officials note the study is ongoing, and “results have not been examined to understand patterns in water quality and corrosion.”
Residents who still have sampling kits must return them on June 20, and residents are also still encouraged to participate in the study. Sampling kits are available at The Gal’s Place at 42077 Route 12, Alexandria Bay.
Virginia Tech researchers have analyzed “first-draw” water samples from 77 private wells. The samples are gathered by letting water sit stagnant for at least six hours and then collecting the first draw from a kitchen tap. Researchers reported that nine homes exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s lead action level. According to the EPA, exceeding the lead action level means the system must take steps to control further corrosion and homeowners should be informed on how to protect their health.
While the EPA rule applies to municipal systems and not private wells, the researchers use the rule as a guideline.
Preliminary results also showed that 13 percent of the first-draw samples contained copper and 12 percent contained zinc. Researchers noted that high levels of both metals can indicate corrosion of brass plumbing components.
Another method of collecting samples involves flushing taps for one minute.
After one minute of flushing, two households contained lead concentrations above the EPA action level. Overall, however, 20 percent of the homes still contained detectable lead.
The Virginia Tech researchers are part of the same team that exposed the lead contamination crisis in Flint, Mich., earlier this year. Leading the study is Dr. Kelsey J. Pieper, a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Once all the samples are collected, Dr. Pieper said analysis and interpretation will take time, but she expects the study to be finalized before the end of the year.
Orleans resident Stephanie Weiss, who helped organize the research effort, said she is grateful to the Virginia Tech researchers for their quick response.
“While we are not at the end of the science yet, at least we are getting real answers,” she said.
Petersburgh PFOA water test results announced
About 1 of every 4 samples were above federal guidelines
-by Bethany Bump, originally posted on June 11, 2016
Petersburgh
Water samples tested from three private wells and 59 private homes in Petersburgh came back above federal guidelines for PFOA contamination, Rensselaer County officials said Friday.
The county, with the state Health Department and Department of Environmental Conservation, has sampled public and private supplies in the area around the Taconic plastics plant due to concerns over perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the water. The latest results came from samples taken from May 4-9.
Out of 18 samples from private wells:
Three showed contamination above the federal guidance level of 70 parts per trillion;
One showed contamination between 21 and 70 ppt; 14 were considered non-detectable, meaning contamination levels were less than 0.67 ppt.
Out of 234 samples taken at private homes, 59 showed contamination above the federal level:
44 samples were between 71 and 1,000 ppt;
15 samples were over 1,001 ppt.
Another 46 samples showed contamination below 20 ppt; 26 samples showed contamination between 21 and 70 ppt; and 103 samples were non-detectable.
For some of the homes, a test had been taken before a water treatment system was installed and then afterward, in order to see whether the system worked.
The testing was performed by Pace Analytical through Bender Labs. Results from 79 samples are still pending.
Those with private water sources with PFOA contamination over 70 ppt can have a filter system installed at their home by Taconic.
Water testing will continue and results will be released as they become available, the county said. Anyone with questions should contact the county health department at 270-2655.
Danger of Pharmaceuticals in Chicago’s Water Supply
by Arabella Breck, originally posted on June 10, 2016
While the most documented effects of pharmaceutical contamination have been on aquatic species, there is evidence that this contamination could affect humans as well, Ventura said.
“We are finding levels of drugs in the environment that could have an effect on human development,” Ventura said. “Exposure to small amounts of these drugs can affect embryonic kidney cells as well as blood cells and breast cancer cells.”
An ordinance going through the Cook County Board of Commissioners recognizes and attempts to address this issue. The ordinance would make it so that pharmaceutical companies would be held responsible for the cost of safe disposal of pharmaceuticals.
A reason why this is not a widely discussed or acknowledged issue in Chicago and Cook County is because the waste stream for the area does not get into the water supply, Shore said.
The water supply comes from Lake Michigan, while the waste stream goes down to eventually the Mississippi River, however measures like this are important because the waste stream does become other people’s water supply, Shore said.
In Chicago there are sites where people can safely and properly dispose of unused pharmaceuticals in every police district, however this ordinance would expand the disposal locations in Chicago and in surrounding suburbs. In addition to expansion to more areas, it is necessary that drop off locations are in places other than police stations as it has been proven through similar programs that people are not comfortable going to police stations, Shore said.
The Cook County commissioners listed as sponsors on the ordinance are Larry Suffredin, 13th district, Richard Boykin, 1st district, Bridget Gainer, 10th district, and Peter Silvestri, 9th district.
Luis Arroyo, state representative for Illinois’ 3rd district, and John P. Daley, 11th Ward Democratic Committeeman in Chicago, are also listed as sponsors.
Although he was listed, Silvestri said in an emailed statement he was no longer a sponsor of the ordinance due to “too many unresolved issues.”
The other sponsors of the ordinance were not made available for comment.
The ordinance is currently held in committee in the Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, according to the Cook County Board of Commissioners website.
Making sure pharmaceuticals do not get into the water is also important because unlike some other contaminants, pharmaceuticals cannot be removed in a wastewater treatment plant, Shore said.
“Wastewater treatment plants are not meant to address complex chemicals, and some pharmaceuticals can get through the system and end up in water sources and even treated drinking water,” according to an analysis of pharmaceuticals and water pollution done by Clean Water Action.
Alameda County, Los Angeles, Marin County, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and San Mateo Counties in California and King County, Washington have passed similar ordinances to the one proposed in Cook County, according to the proposed Cook County ordinance.
The Alameda County ordinance was sustained in a court case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, according to the Cook County ordinance.
The main issue faced by the ordinances that have passed in California is opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, said Ventura, who has worked as a stakeholder on the ordinances in California.
“[This program] will cost industry about a penny per medication,” Ventura said. “Threats that this will raise the price of drugs do not hold up.”
One reason why ordinances like these are more feasible is because the process of getting a contaminant regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency requires extensive research that proves a particular contaminant causes harm, said Olga Lyandres, research manager with the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
“The regulatory system for chemicals in the United States is set up so that it is difficult to regulate a contaminant unless there is very strong evidence that it causes harm,” Lyandres said. “Pharmaceuticals are one class of emerging contaminants. [There are] a lot of [contaminants] that we are being exposed to and the effects are not easy to observe.”
Finding ways to regulate contaminants continues to be an important battle, said Leyla Ahmadi, a spokesperson for National Resources Defense Council, in an email interview.
“Water can be contaminated by many different pollutants, however, while some are more toxic than others, all pollutants are still harmful to human health,” Ahmadi said. “The EPA [should] take a closer look at unregulated pollutants and put more effort into cleaning up America’s water and preserved the clean water we have.”
Pharmaceuticals are just one way that the nation’s water supply is contaminated and it is important to continue water advocacy work in other areas to ensure a healthier, safer water supply in the future, said Kim LeBo, program organizer for Clean Water Action
“If we do not have clean drinking water, it impacts our health and the health of our communities,” LeBo said. “Water is really very important for maintaining life. We want to make sure that resource is protected and conserved.”
Research links contamination to leaking coal ash ponds
by Tyler Dukes and Laura Leslie, originally posted on June 10, 2016
RALEIGH, N.C. — New research by Duke University scientists indicates that unlined coal ash basins throughout the Southeast have contaminated nearby surface and groundwater with toxic elements – and that closing the ponds doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.
Researchers examined coal ash sites in five states, including North Carolina, comparing background levels of such contaminants as arsenic and selenium with those in monitoring wells and surface water. Each of the 21 sites showed higher concentrations of common coal ash contaminants, and nearly one-third exceeded U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for drinking water and aquatic life.
“In all cases, we saw very striking evidence for leaking of coal ash ponds,” study author Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality in Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, said.
The paper was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which is part of a lawsuit against Duke Energy over coal ash cleanup, provided funding for the study.
Testing showed impacts to surface and groundwater even at closed sites that weren’t receiving new coal ash, the byproduct of coal-fired energy production. Vengosh said this evidence – showing damage has already been done – is missing from the conversation about how to deal with coal ash.
“We have already contaminants that are in the subsurface in the groundwater that are moving toward the regional drinking water aquifer,” Vengosh said. “So, I think the first stage is recognizing we have a problem, and we have to address that.”
Duke Energy spokeswoman Dawn Santoianni said Friday that, although company officials hadn’t read the full study, it didn’t appear to offer anything new.
Matthew Starr, Upper Neuse Riverkeeper, said he wasn’t surprised by the findings.
“We’ve looked at scientific literature, we’ve looked at the groundwater monitoring wells that are around all of these coal ash ponds, on the banks of rivers throughout the entire state,” Starr said. “For more evidence to come out that says, ‘This is related to coal ash, to coal combustion residuals,’ is no shock to us.”
Despite the paper’s findings, Santoianni said surface water “remains well protected based on our permits,” which legally allows some discharge from the ponds.
But the work of Vengosh and his colleagues specifically examined the role of leaks on surrounding contamination – over and above what results from permitted discharge.
“The answer is yes, we do see evidence for leaking of the coal ash pond into the groundwater, which is different from the outflow from the pond,” Vengosh said.
The utility has frequently run afoul of its discharge permits, most notably in February 2014 when a busted stormwater pipe dumped 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River near Eden. The spill resulted in a $6.6 million fine from state environmental regulators.
That fine followed a $7 million penalty last year for contaminated groundwater at nearly all its coal ash ponds statewide.
In March, Duke Energy was cited again by the Department of Environmental Quality for wastewater leaks at 12 of its 14 plants.
Duke Energy officials have noted that “every earthen impoundment” leaks, which they say underscores the need to permanently close down the ponds.
But how to do that is an open question.
Environmental groups have pushed for complete excavation and relocation of the ash to lined landfills that would prevent further contamination. That’s the strategy state regulators currently plan to enforce, although they’ve asked North Carolina lawmakers for the ability to review the plan next year if Duke Energy takes action to fix dams and provide water to nearby residents.
Such a review would leave open the potential for “cap-in-place” at some basins, draining the pond water and covering dry ash with an impermeable barrier. Duke Energy has argued cap-in-place will be more cost-effective and would still protect the environment – a claim environmentalists have dismissed.
“Under any closure approach, we will monitor groundwater for many years and can take additional steps to enhance it, if needed, based on those results,” Santoianni said. “Arbitrarily excavating and relocating ash is not the best solution to protect groundwater since it causes a host of other environmental and community impacts.”
Vengosh said that, given the contamination already present, better monitoring will be a crucial part of cleanup. His team is already working on additional research to figure out how nearby drinking water wells have been impacted by the basins, which Friday’s paper did not specifically address.
Amid competing claims from environmentalists and industry, Vengosh said he’d like to see science play a much larger role in the discussions about coal ash – and how to restore decades of contamination from the long-ignored dumps.
“I think much more resources and much more efforts should be attempted to include scientists in this conversation and actually have objective data, which we’re trying to do at Duke University, to understand what’s going on,” Vengosh said.
Repeal bottled water tax amid positive tests for lead in schools
originally posted on June 10 2016
In the wake of the crisis in Flint, Michigan, where a water supply tainted with high levels of lead endangered an entire community of children, Chicago Public Schools has undertaken testing of the water supply in its educational facilities. The preliminary results have been disturbing. Twelve schools were found to have dangerously high levels of lead in at least one source of drinking water.
More testing will follow, but informed and concerned parents are already packing their children for school with store-bought bottles of water.
The notion that the water supply in the very institutions responsible for nurturing our children’s social and intellectual growth may, in fact, be poisoning them is frightening and unacceptable. However, by testing lead levels and making the results of those tests public, CPS is, at minimum, taking the initial steps necessary to begin to correct the problem.
Now the City Council and Mayor Rahm Emanuel must take an additional step to support the families of the children imperiled by this risk and rescind the 5-cent tax on bottled water in Chicago. If parents have no choice but to pay extra to purchase clean drinking water for their children — clean drinking water that should be free and accessible — the city has a moral obligation to lessen the expense of that purchase.
At the Cook County Board of Commissioners, I have introduced a resolution calling upon the City Council to take immediate steps to rescind the bottled water tax. It is also critically important that the city hold public hearings on the issue to ensure that the impacted communities are informed and their concerns addressed.
Richard Boykin, Cook County commissioner, 1st District
SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes.
Strides for African-Americans
It’s not just young women who don’t appreciate Hillary Clinton’s historic achievement (“Neil Steinberg: Younger women don’t realize how far they’ve come” — June 10).
At a family dinner, I described a car trip I’d recently taken through the south. “I wasn’t in a hurry so didn’t speed,” I explained. “When I became tired from driving, I pulled off the highway and checked into the nearest motel to spend a restful night, and I was never turned away.”
Young family members stifled yawns, and finally one asked: “So what was the big deal about that?”
It occurred to me that many young African-Americans aren’t aware there was a time when a black man wasn’t allowed to stay at many motels, south or north, even if he had money or credit cards to pay for lodging. That shameful era is glossed over in history classes.
Hosea L. Martin, Bronzeville
Meeks’ main concern: himself
Gov. Bruce Rauner said some of the Chicago Public schools are “crumbling prisons.” What’s interesting is that he’s only visited two schools out of the hundreds. It’s clear the governor and Springfield are in no hurry to get a budget done or help fund Chicago Public Schools. Your paper is disappointed in Rev. James Meeks for his silence on this issue. Well, Mr. Meeks is silent because he wants to keep his job as the chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education. Gov. Rauner appointed him; Mr. Meeks is concerned about himself, not CPS.
Richard Barber, Beverly
Philippines: Samar outbreak declared, 33 deaths reported
by Robert Herriman, originally posted on June 10 2016
In a follow-up to a previous report on the diarrhea outbreak that has sickened hundreds in the Eastern Visayas region, particularly the province of Samar, health officials have now officially declared the situation an outbreak in three Samar provinces: Calbiga, Sta. Rita and Catbalogan city, Samar.
The declaration was made by DOH-08 regional director, Minerva Molon who said that as of Thursday, some 2,937 individuals have been affected by diarrhea caused by a still yet unidentified etiological agent, resulting in 33 deaths to date. This more than double the cases reported just days ago.
Molona notes that the source of the outbreak is linked to poor source of drinking water and intake of contaminated foods.
Like the diarrheal outbreak in Zamboanga City, officials say the outbreak is likely due to unclean water due to the drought.
However, unlike the Zambo outbreak, where a viral etiology has been linked to the illnesses, the Samar outbreak is suspected to be due to a bacterium and testing continues.
Meanwhile, DOH-8 is continually undergoing disease surveillance and reporting.
Federal Report Appears to Undercut EPA Assurances on Water Safety In Pennsylvania
Dimock, one of many places where gas drilling boomed in Pennsylvania, gets a sobering take on the quality of its drinking water.
-by Abrahm Lustgarten, originally posted on June 9, 2016
Since 2009 the people of Dimock, Pennsylvania, have insisted that, as natural gas companies drilled into their hillsides, shaking and fracturing their ground, their water had become undrinkable. It turned a milky brown, with percolating bubbles of explosive methane gas. People said it made them sick.
Their stories — told first through an investigation into the safety of gas drilling by ProPublica — turned Dimock into an epicenter of what would evolve into a national debate about natural gas energy and the dangers of the process of “fracking,” or shattering layers of bedrock in order to release trapped natural gas.
But the last word about the quality of Dimock’s water came from assurances in a 2012 statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the federal department charged with safeguarding the Americans’ drinking water. The agency declared that the water coming out of Dimock’s taps did not require emergency action, such as a federal cleanup. The agency’s stance was widely interpreted to mean the water was safe.
Now another federal agency charged with protecting public health has analyzed the same set of water samples, and determined that is not the case.
The finding, released May 24 from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warns that a list of contaminants the EPA had previously identified were indeed dangerous for people to consume. The report found that the wells of 27 Dimock homes contain, to varying degrees, high levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic, and copper sufficient to pose ahealth risk. It also warned of a mysterious compound called 4-chlorophenyl phenyl ether, a substance for which the agency could not even evaluate the risk, and noted that in earlier water samples non-natural pollutants including acetone, toluene and chloroform were detected . Those contaminants are known to be dangerous, but they registered at such low concentrations that their health effects could not easily be evaluated. The water in 17 homes also contained enough flammable gas so as to risk an explosion.
The EPA had asked the ATSDR to help evaluate the health risks of its water samples back in 2011. At the time, the ATSDR warned people not to drink their water, and promised a more complete evaluation. The report released last month is that complete evaluation — an assessment of water samples taken from 64 homes during a short period in 2012 when drilling in the surrounding community had come to a temporary halt.
The fact that the contaminants were detected in water had been shared with residents in 2012. But the qualitative assessment of whether those contaminants pose a danger is new.
The new conclusions appear to call into question the EPA’s assurances, and could well reignite a smoldering controversy over whether the agency had prematurely abandoned its research into the safety of fracking in Dimock and other sites across the country. ProPublica reported in 2012 that the agency had curtailed investigations it had begun into potential water contamination in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.
The May 24 findings about Dimock also lead to an obvious question: How can two federal agencies charged with safeguarding the country’s health and environment use the same water samples and reach such different conclusions?
A spokesperson for the EPA offered a seemingly cryptic explanation: EPA was testing whether the contaminants were “hazardous,” while the ATSDR was considering whether they were safe to drink. In a statement the EPA sent to ProPublica, it described the ATSDR report as “useful information” for Dimock residents. The spokesperson promised that the agency would “consider the findings.”
Of course, the EPA, in certain respects, had already considered the findings. In 2012 — after collecting and analyzing the same water samples used by the ATSDR — the agency detected the same assortment of contaminants. It just ultimately did not describe their presence as a significant health threat. The agency eventually ended it investigation into the groundwater in Dimock. Its detailed water test results were distributed confidentially to homeowners without any evaluation of their meaning, while a general report was issued publically downplaying the danger.
At the time, ProPublica, which had been leaked a portion of the sample results shared privately with Dimock landowners, wrote that the water contained significant amounts of metals and chemicals and there appeared to be a disconnect between the EPA’s conclusions and the chemical make-up of the water. “I’m sitting here looking at the values I have on my sheet — I’m over the thresholds — and yet they are telling me my water is drinkable,” Scott Ely, a Dimock resident, told ProPublica in March, 2012. “I’m confused.”
One possible explanation is the difference in the two mandates and authority of the two agencies. The EPA — in examining the pollution in Dimock — was acting under the environmental law known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. In other words, it was trying to determine whether Dimock’s contamination qualified as a federal Superfund site requiring a federal cleanup.
Pennsylvania environment officials had already determined that a number of drilling violations by a company named Cabot Oil and Gas had likely contributed to some pollution and disturbance underground. It sanctioned Cabot, suspended their drilling permits in the area, and required them, for a time, to supply drinking water to Dimock homes. In 2012, Cabot settled with dozens of families who had sued the company for an undisclosed amount.
That contamination existed, and that it may have been caused by the drilling, was not in dispute when the EPA made its judgment call. “Spills and other releases have been documented… from these drilling activities,” noted a January 2012 EPA document. “There is reason to believe that a release of hazardous substances has occurred.”
The EPA’s January action memo went on to describe the contaminants and summarized that “a chronic health risk exists for most wells and that the situation supports a ‘Do Not Use the Water’ action.” Beside several of the most concerning substances detected, the agency wrote: “note that children reside at this location.”
Still, Superfund law sets several criteria beyond a health concern to qualify for a cleanup, including the possibility of alternative solutions to a cleanup. There is also an explicit loophole built into the Superfund law for petroleum and natural gas; neither are allowed to be defined as a “hazardous substance” requiring cleanup.
How those factors weighed on the EPA’s characterizations of, and decisions concerning, Dimock’s water is unclear. The agency has never explained its decision in detail. But just six months later, the EPA issued a carefully-worded statement declaring what appeared to be a reversal, saying it “has determined that there are not levels of contaminants present that would require additional action by the Agency.” It said that it would stop delivering clean emergency water to Dimock homes, and noted that in the homes with the worst contamination residents planned to install water treatment systems.
The EPA’s 2012 decision was widely interpreted to mean that the water supplies in Dimock had been found to be safe.
“EPA finds Pennsylvania well water safe after drilling,” a headline in the Los Angeles Times read.
In a response to ProPublica’s questions this week, an EPA spokesperson said the agency had completed a second round of testing and concluded that the worst water problems were confined to just four homes. Those homes either already had, or planned to install, water treatment systems that the EPA expected would reduce their exposure risk. The EPA emphasized that ultimately cleaning rural residential water is not its responsibility. “Private drinking water well owners are responsible for sampling and maintaining their wells and addressing the operational issues that can affect drinking water quality,” wrote Michael D’Andrea, the EPA’s director of communications for its Mid-Atlantic region, in an email.
The ATSDR, on the other hand, serves to advise residents with regards to their health. It examined the same water samples as the EPA, but assumed that the highest levels of contaminants detected were what people would be exposed to. And it simply advises on issues of public health.
The ATSDR doesn’t address the stickiest political questions that have bogged down the conversation about “fracking.” It won’t require a cleanup, or address whether or not the contamination was caused by the drilling activities or some other source.
It also has limits; having only examined water sampled during a short period, more than four years ago, when drilling was on pause.
Today in Pennsylvania, drilling activity is down, thanks to the collapse of oil and gas prices. Statewide drilling activity is about one-fifth of what it was in 2012, and there is not currently any drilling in the immediate Dimock area. Cabot Oil and Gas is still banned from drilling new wells in a nine-square mile area there. Asked for comment on the ATSDR report, a spokeswoman from Cabot wrote “It is imperative to review this study in full context and next to the separately concluded investigations by both the DEP [Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection] and the EPA which found the level of contaminants found do not possess a threat to human health or the environment.”
Little additional water testing has been done in the Dimock area of late. The ATSDR says conditions may well have changed, and it would need more data to determine whether the water residents there are drinking today will make them sick.
But what its report does do is begin to explicitly answer one of the most important and enduring questions that has arisen as gas drilling has raised water contamination suspicions across the country: “ATSDR found some of the chemicals in the private water wells at this site at levels high enough to affect health … pose a physical hazard… or make the water unsuitable for drinking.”