Bottled water was used until test result came back

-originally posted on April 13, 2016

DETROIT – Water tests at Henry Ford Hospital came back safe Thursday night and show the water is safe to use, according to officials.

The water on the Henry Ford Hospital Campus is safe for patients and employees use for drinking, handwashing and bathing.

The hospital used bottled water as a precaution after the hospital’s tap water became discolored.

Elective surgeries that were canceled have resumed. The facilities team cleaned and replaced filters in the ice and water machines throughout the building.

The water testing results for the Center for Athletic Medicine are expected to be back early Friday morning. Patients and staff at that location are continuing to use bottled water.

Hospital spokeswoman Brenda Craig said water pipes had been flushed and chlorinated, and water was running clear Thursday afternoon, but samples had been sent for testing. She said it appeared that some type of sediment was in the water.

Craig said the hospital was fully operational and no patient procedures had been affected. Craig said the hospital is still using sterilized water for procedures, which is a standard policy.

Toilets could still be flushed, but ice and water machines were not being used.

The hospital’s initial statement said the discoloration could have been tied to a pipe issue related to the M1 Rail construction on Woodward Avenue. However, Craig said the cause is still being investigated and referred all further questions to the Detroit water department or the M1 Rail.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department released an updated Thursday afternoon saying the water is clear at Henry Ford Hospital and the Fisher Building and there is no report of any contamination.

A statement from DWSD reads, in part:

“On Wednesday, construction crews activated a new water main in the area as part of ongoing infrastructure improvements along Woodward Avenue, releasing sediment through the lines that reached several buildings including Henry Ford Hospital and the Fisher Building. DWSD crews have flushed the transmission line, including the fire hydrant in front of the Hospital, forcing the sediment from the water system. The water is currently running clear, and there is no report of any contamination.”

DWSD said results of water testing are expected by about 6 p.m. Thursday.

Here’s more of the water department’s statement:

“This water quality issue is isolated to New Center and does not affect any other DWSD customers. There is no danger of lead in the water system. If anyone in the area is concerned about sediment in the water, DWSD encourages them to run the water at their tap for 30 to 60 seconds to flush out the sediment. If there is discoloration and it continues after this process, do not use the water and contact DWSD Field Services immediately at 313-267-7401.”

by R. Krishna Kumar, originally posted on April 14, 2016

A study has revealed that the drinking water supplied to Mysuru and surrounding regions is chemically contaminated.

The study, undertaken by the city-based National Institute of Engineering (NIE), indicated that the drinking water sources were contaminated with the chemical phthalate, which is detrimental to ones health in the long run.

Groundwater contamination was also observed owing to the seeping in of domestic sewage in many places, including borewells near open drains.

The groundwater in industrial zones of Mysuru was found to be contaminated with a variety of chemicals of which phthalates are extensively used in formulations of pesticides and plastics.

The two-year study on water quality in general and phthalate contamination in particular was carried out by postgraduate students and two faculty members of the Department of Civil Engineering at NIE, with funding from the Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP), a World Bank–MHRD initiative, according to G.L. Shekar, principal, NIE. Water samples were collected from surface and groundwater sources within Mysuru city. The sample locations included residential areas of Kuvempunagar and Gokulam, and commercial areas such as Irwin Road and Hootagalli industrial areas. In addition, water samples were also collected from the Kabini and Cauvery, the two main surface sources of drinking water to Mysuru city.

Initial extraction of analyte (substance for testing) was done at the Environmental Engineering Laboratory at NIE and further analysis was carried out at a reputed research institute in Bengaluru, according to K.C. Manjunath and M.S. Kanchana, who led the study.

by Carlos Delgado, originally published on April 14, 2016

At a Tuesday news conference Professor Marc Edwards and the Flint Water Study team at Virginia Tech announced that four months after a federal state of emergency was declared over high levels of lead, Flint’s water remains unsafe to drink.

The report followed the group’s second round of lead testing. It came two years after the city switched its water supply to the corrosive Flint River, without adding orthophosphate, leading to lead leaching from pipes into the city’s water supply, poisoning the city’s residents.

The study utilized water samples collected from 187 Flint homes and focused on the 174 homes that participated in both the first and second rounds of testing (the first round was conducted in August 2015). The study found that, while the number of homes with elevated lead levels has decreased, 15 percent of homes still had lead levels above 15 parts per billion (ppb), the federal “action level” established by the EPA. Ten percent of homes had levels above 23 ppb.

Several homes saw their lead levels increase from the first round of testing, in some cases dramatically. The highest concentration of lead discovered was a staggering 2,253 ppb in a home that had tested at 17 ppb in 2015. The average lead concentration across all sampling actually increased between the two sampling rounds, driven largely by homes that had super concentrated lead levels.

The study found no strong correlation between residents’ lead levels from one year to the next. This is due to the nature of the pipe corrosion, since chunks of lead piping or solder can break off at any time and cause severe water contamination, even in homes that tested clean for lead in the past. Edwards compared the situation to “Russian roulette,” stating that at any point a glass of water could contain extremely high lead concentration, and there is no way for residents to be sure that their water is safe.

The issue of showering and bathing in the water remains controversial. State and federal officials have repeatedly assured residents that the water is safe for showering and bathing, while residents have continued to report experiencing lesions, rashes and hair loss after coming into contact with the water. In the news conference, Edwards also presented the water as being safe for bathing, while admitting that the relationship between water exposure and rashes is “one of the most understudied issues, scientifically, in the water treatment field.”

The nonprofit organization Water Defense, founded by Academy Award nominated actor Mark Ruffalo, has challenged the official line, telling the Detroit News, “It is irresponsible and incomprehensible for anyone to declare bathing and showering is safe based on testing sinks and using drinking water standards to declare bath/shower water safe—let alone not even testing bath/shower water for the full spectrum of chemical.”

The action plan presented by Edwards at the news conference for repairing the water system focused almost entirely on the need to move more corrosion-controlled water through the system in order to rebuild the protective coating around the lead pipes that had been destroyed by the corrosive Flint River water. The replacement of the lead pipes or the overhaul of the water mains, the only measure that would completely eliminate the threat of lead from the water system, was not seriously addressed.

Even the half-measure of corrosion control is proving to be difficult to implement, since Flint residents have been reluctant to use the water in large quantities. In homes with the highest lead concentration, the study found that the residents were using water at a fraction of the rate of the national average, due largely to the inability to pay water bills and the fear of contamination. Although state officials have discussed making $30 million available for residents’ water bills over the past months, and this would only involve drinking water as opposed to water for sewerage, so far nothing has been done. It was disclosed that last year even though 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and the water was poisoned, residents had the highest water bills in the US.

Edwards noted that, even with normal levels of water use, it still took a year and a half before corrosion control was able to repair the water system in Washington, DC, which suffered a similar lead-in-water crisis in 2004. The Flint system has been receiving this treatment for six months and has still not been able to meet federal standards.

Many Flint residents are voicing opposition to using Flint tap water for bathing. Melissa Mays, a Flint resident and member of the community action group Water You Fighting For, voiced her anger and opposition in this video taken April 13, 2016 one day after the Virginia Tech news conference.

Water Defense tested her water, which is burning her family’s eyes, skin and causing hair loss. The testing found many carcinogenic byproducts including diochlorine benzene and chloroform.

While Flint families are angry that next to nothing has been done to resolve the water crisis, the tone of the news conference was generally optimistic, in line with anxious official attempts to present the water system as being on a “path to recovery.” Dr. Edwards’ attitude toward government officials expressed at Tuesday’s press conference softened from that shown in earlier interviews and his Congressional testimony last month. After earlier denouncing the role of the EPA in covering up the lead levels and conspiring to silence those who sought to raise the alarm about Flint, Edwards gave a “shout out to the great work being done by EPA” in distributing lead filters to Flint residents, a stopgap measure that can only provide temporary help.

Edwards has been brought onto various committees involving the EPA and the state of Michigan in an effort to provide them with an aura of legitimacy. Edwards has stated that he is prepared to work with anyone whom he feels will help Flint get back on its feet. While his concerns may be genuine, the aims of the EPA and the state are not. The federal EPA and the state of Michigan are in desperate need of a cover following the exposure of their criminal role in allowing the poisoning of an entire city with lead-tainted water.

After the press conference Edwards reportedly told the Roanoke Times that his team is facing major financial struggles. Edwards said that work in Flint cost his lab $250,000, plus the equivalence of five years’ worth of work hours. The lab requires $850,000 annually to operate, but has raised a little less than $100,000 on a GoFundMe page and gotten a National Science Foundation Grant worth $33,000.

Edwards ended the session by stating that Flint needed money and that the water system in Flint was in very poor condition. Edwards said he believed the lead pipes needed to be replaced and the water mains upgraded. “… [T]he water mains in Flint are also in very, very bad shape. And until they are rehabilitated in a proactive way, I don’t think the system is really financially sustainable. I really feel that the federal government as well as the state government owes it to Flint to help upgrade the water main system so that the system can become financially sustainable.”

However, the state of Michigan and the US federal government have demonstrated again and again that they have no intention of providing the financial resources needed to provide safe water to Flint residents, let alone the hundreds of communities across the country facing a similar danger of lead and water.

The EPA abandoned a study of fracking pollution in Wyoming. Then one of the agency’s scientists kept investigating.

-by Zoe Carpenter, originally posted on April 13, 2016

For about a decade, residents in Pavillion, Wyoming, have wanted to know what’s wrong with their water. The tiny town is surrounded by more than 1,000 gas wells drilled into sandstone, which has been fractured with a high-pressure mix of water and chemicals to release the gas trapped inside. Pavillion was something of a fracking frontier: In the mid-2000s, when residents started to complain of foul-looking water that smelled like gasoline, the American shale-gas revolution was about to explode. The EPA agreed to investigate the Pavillion case, and in 2011 released a draft report that found high levels of carcinogens and at least one chemical linked to fracking in two test wells. Then, in 2013, the agency abruptly passed the inquiry off to state regulators, whose industry-fundedreviews have been inconclusive.

But the scientist who was in charge of the EPA’s investigation refused to abandon Pavillion, and now he has evidence that a major aquifer system that underlies Pavillion and the nearby Wind River reservation was contaminated by chemicals used in the fracking process. Dominic DiGiulio (now a scholar at Stanford University) and his research partner Robert Jackson released a peer-reviewed study in late March based on an analysis of data collected by federal and state officials, some of which they obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. In other words, they finished the study EPA should have completed. They found “a slew of chemicals, all of which are known to be used for hydraulic fracturing,” said DiGiulio, which amount to “direct lines of evidence of impact.” One specific finding was high levels of chloride, likely from the salt solutions used in fracking fluid.

“If I were a resident, I’d be angry,” said Jackson of the EPA’s failure to complete its own investigation. Politics might have had something to do with it, he suggested. At the same time scientists were studying Pavillion, the Obama administration was deepening its relationship with the natural-gas industry, which it embraced as an alternative to coal and as economic booster. The result was tension between scientists in the field and senior EPA officials: DiGiulio disagreed with the move to pass off the inquiry to Wyoming, a decision that he says was “not made by scientists.” Meanwhile, environmentalists saw Pavillion as part of a pattern: Around the same time the EPA abandoned its research there, it closed several other investigations into pollution from natural-gas production.

In a much-criticized, 998-page draft review of the safety of the fracking boom released in 2015, the EPA reported that the practice had no “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.” The study did not consider Pavillion, nor serious allegations of contamination in Dimrock, Pennsylvania, and Parker County, Texas. In January, the EPA’s Science Advisory Board criticized the agency for failing to “clearly describe the system(s) of interest (e.g., groundwater, surface water) nor the deåfinitions of ‘systemic,’ ‘widespread,’ or ‘impacts,’” and it recommended the agency consider local-level contamination more seriously. “I don’t think EPA looked at this issue very carefully, unfortunately,” DiGiulio said of the draft study, though he’s hopeful the final report will reflect the concern from the advisory board.

Pavillion presented a particularly complicated case study, because the area is also pockmarked with unlined pits that were used to store diesel-based drilling fluids before the practice was banned in the mid-1990s. DiGiulio and Jackson found compounds associated with those pits in Pavillion-area water wells, which need to be more thoroughly sampled before conclusions can be drawn as to whether they, like the aquifer deeper down, are also polluted with fracking chemicals. “It’s hard to figure out what happened at Pavillion because you have 60 years of questionable practices there,” Jackson explained. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh we don’t do that anymore.’ But there are many things we are doing today that we should worry about.”

One of the current practices that concerns the scientists is the shallowness of fracking activity. In Pavillion and other natural gas sites in the Southwest, fracking often occurs much closer to the surface—and to groundwater stocks—than in well-known, deeper formations like the Marcellus Shale. That means there’s a smaller safety margin: If a well leaks, the chemicals don’t have to travel very far to get into the water system. Not a single state limits how shallowly companies can frack, though Colorado and Texas require operators to go through an extra permitting process. More research needs to be done to assess the risks particular to shallow fracking, DiGiulio said.

The EPA’s ability to regulate fracking is constrained by the “Halliburton Loophole,” which exempts natural-gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency has also suffered a series of funding cuts that may have undermined its oversight capabilities. But multiple reports from the Government Accountability Office, including one released in the same week as DiGiulio and Jackson’s study, have faulted the EPA for failing to use what authority it does have to protect water sources. The most recent audit found that EPA is not collecting enough information to perform appropriate oversight over wastewater from oil and gas activity. Although EPA has blamed staff shortages, the GAO noted that the agency has not even conducted an analysis to determine what resources it needs.

An EPA spokesperson said the agency was in the process of reviewing DiGiulio and Jackson’s paper, and that it would be considered in the final water-risk report, which is anticipated later this year. Asked to explain the decision to hand off the Pavillion investigation to the state of Wyoming, EPA responded, in part, “EPA and the state both agreed that the best path forward in advancing the understanding of groundwater issues in the Pavillion area included EPA’s support for the state’s additional investigation of pits, production wells and drinking water. We determined that this additional investigation was a positive step that would generate additional information and build on EPA’s work.”

published on April 13, 2016

GAITHERSBURG, Md. (NEWSPLEX) — A new report gives Virginia a B for monitoring water quality in streams and rivers.

The Izaak Walton League of America report says state water quality monitoring in streams across the country is haphazard and limited, which can mean people do not know about the health of their local waterways and pollution is undetected.

The league investigated stream monitoring practices and water pollution problems in all 50 states.

According to the report, only two percent of rivers and streams nationwide are effectively monitored.

In Virginia, IWLA says there are more than 94,000 miles of waterways and 872 permanent water monitoring stations, which means most of the waterways are not tested regularly for contamination.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a testing station should monitor 25 miles of waterway, which means the Commonwealth should have almost 3,800 monitoring sites.

These sites can be used to check for things like bacteria levels, mercury, acids, PCBs, nutrients and sediment in the water.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 requires states to monitor the safety of all waterways, report water quality information publicly every two years, and address pollution problems.

However, IWLA reports that states vary widely in water quality monitoring, including the standards used to assess water quality, where and when waters are tested, types of tests performed, and how that information is given to the public.

The league also says many states, including Virginia, have weak water quality standards.

According to state reports to the EPA, more than half of the streams and rivers states have been testing were not safe for their designated uses such as swimming and fishing.

IWLA also says the information Virginia submits to the EPA is old, up to six years out of date.

“There is an alarming lack of timely information about water quality in this country, including in Virginia,” said IWLA Executive Board Chair Jodi Arndt Labs. “Every morning, you can read about that day’s air quality in the local paper or on your smart phone. Yet no information about the health of local streams is five to yet years old. That’s a problem.”

IWLA suggests that states empower private citizens to collect scientifically valid water quality data, which can provide more timely and local information about waterway health.

The league offers training and support to citizen volunteers through its Save Our Streams program.

For more information on the report and Virginia’s grade or on the SOS program, click on the links alongside this story.

by Andrew MacFarlane, originally published on April 13, 2016

Although smog may be the first thought that comes to mind when diagnosing China’s pollution problem, it’s the country’s water supply that poses the biggest threat to the nearly 1.5 billion people who live in the world’s most populous country.

Over 80 percent of the water used by homes, farms and factories across the country’s plains is too contaminated to drink or bathe in, according to a new report by Chinese Media.

“From my point of view, this shows how water is the biggest environmental issue in China,” Dabo Guan, a University of East Anglia in Britain professor, told the New York Times.

“People in the cities, they see air pollution every day, so it creates huge pressure from the public. But in the cities, people don’t see how bad the water pollution is. They don’t have the same sense.”

A large number of Chinese cities get their water from deep reservoirs, which weren’t part of the studied wells, said Ma Jun, head of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, in a Chinese news release.

In the survey conducted by the Ministry of Water Resources, water was classified into five categories — class one being of the best quality, class five being the worst. No water was found fit to be classified as class one, just under 19.9 percent of water was sorted into classes two and three, 32.9 percent was found to be in class four and a whopping 47.2 percent was placed in class five.

Since air pollution has been the most popular of the country’s problems in recent years, the underground water pollution has been all but forgotten, Zheng Yuhong explained in a China Water Resources report.

Treating the underground wells of their ammonia, nitrite and nitrate contamination is no easy task, Ma Jun warned. Overexploitation could lead to cave-ins and rock fractures.

The shallow, contaminated waters force cities to delve deeper into the surface in search of clean water, but that only puts more stress on the deep reservoirs.

published on February 5, 2012

A commitment was made by the United States to the Hopi reservation upon its establishment stating it would provide the tribe with water sufficient to achieve its purpose as a permanent homeland for the Hopi Tribe.

As arsenic levels in some areas have exceeded those set by the Federal drinking water regulations, the tribe said enough. On January 19, a complaint was filed by the Hopi Tribe in the United States Court of Federal Claims seeking damages as a result of high levels of arsenic in the drinking water supply for the eastern part of the reservation according to a Hopi press release.

The carcinogen is a poison that is known to have serious health effects. In an October story by Indian Country Today Media Network, “Long-term ingestion of the metallic substance can result in thickening and discoloration of the skin, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, numbness in hands and feet, partial paralysis and blindness.” Arsenic has also been linked to an increased risk of diabetes mellitus.

For the tribe, the word sufficient in the agreement meant in quantity and quality of the water, which hasn’t been the case in the communities at First Mesa and Second Mesa, where levels have been recorded at more than four times the normal level.

According to the tribe, the federal government has known about the serious risks posed on the reservation for years with no resolve.

“Safe drinking water can be provided for the Hopi Tribe for many years to come but can only be delivered to the communities in need at a substantial cost,” according to Lionel Puhuyesva, Hopi Water Resources program director.

A sufficient supply of water is a fundamental component of the establishment of the Hopi reservation and a vital component of the government-to-government trust relationship. The failure to deliver on this agreement is a violation of federal law according to the Hopi Tribe. The lawsuit seeks to recovery money damages to compensate for a new water supply and other related damages.

by yalibnan, originally posted on January 8, 2016

The majority of drinking water supplied to Lebanese households doesn’t meet the minimum safety standards, the Ministers of Health and Industry announced last week according to a report by An Nahar newspaper

In a joint news conference, Health Minister Wael Abu Faour and Industry Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan outlined the latest efforts to regulate the operations of private water bottling and distribution companies across Lebanon.

“The decision taken two months ago to shut down businesses that don’t meet sanitary standards followed tests showing that more than 80 percent of water sold did not conform to the required standards” said Hassan.

Both ministries had given companies selling drinking water a deadline to apply for licenses in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

Companies would only receive their licenses after teams from both ministries inspect factories to ensure that operations are in line with the set guidelines.

“The company that fails to meet the requirements shall be given a notice in order to fulfill the necessary conditions, while those that did not apply for licensing will be closed,” said Faour.

by Claudia Palma, originally posted on December 27, 2015

SIERRA MADRE >> While cities across California are struggling to get by in the drought, some are having a tougher time than others.

Sierra Madre is one of them. Not only is the small town of about 11,000 residents unique in its Mayberry-esque charm, but its water woes are like no other. Since the drought began several years ago, the city has seen its water-related problems snowball.

The city is already one of a handful of cities facing a hefty fine for failing to meet its state-mandated water conservation targets, including neighboring Arcadia.

But unlike its neighbor to the south, with triple the residents, Sierra Madre was 11 percentage points short of its target in October versus only 6 points short for Arcadia.

“I’m hoping that very soon we’ll start turning around and moving in the right direction,” said Sierra Madre Mayor John Capoccia.

The city, which always relied exclusively on groundwater from its side of the Raymond Groundwater Basin, saw water levels there drastically drop over the last three years. The city shares the Basin with Arcadia, though Arcadia’s wells are on a much deeper end of the basin, whereas Sierra Madre’s wells are in a much shallower end, limiting its pumping ability.

In 2013, Sierra Madre was forced to begin importing water from the Metropolitan Water District. That led to a new problem. The water source has a different chemistry, temperature and disinfecting agent than the groundwater supply. That started taking a toll on the city’s aging infrastructure.

Residents began to see yellow, foul-smelling water coming from their taps ‑ the result of iron oxide being released from the inside of old pipes.

Residents began running their faucets a few minutes longer, until the water ran clear. And the city also began to increase its flushing of hydrants to help with the discoloration. Both practices used up more water just as the city was expected to be conserving.

Since then, the city has spent more than $50,000 on water testing, and different treatments to try and clear up the yellow water, reducing but not completely eliminating the problem.

Earlier this month, the city council took a unique step in hopes of eventually eliminating the yellow water. Sometime later this month, the city plans to pump the imported water through its own wells. The hope is that by recharging the groundwater and placing the imported water through the spreading grounds, it will eliminate the chloramine causing the yellow water.

But it comes at a cost ‑ three times what it cost to pump the water before the drought.

Even with clearer water, the damage may have already been done to much of the city’s water infrastructure. The introduction of imported water may have accelerated the aging of some of the city’s 80-plus-year-old water mains. Over three months this summer, the city saw a more than 600 percent increase in water main leaks, compared to the same time two years ago.

The council decided in October that it’s time to start replacing some of the city’s worst mains ‑ something that was not possible earlier because of lack of funds, which hasn’t changed much, but now there is an urgency.

“It’s just not cost-effective to temporarily repair a (water main) that is deteriorating rapidly,” said Capoccia.

The mains under Skyland Drive and Idle Hour Lane will be among the first to be replaced starting in January at a cost of $384,110. As of Dec. 8, there is about $2 million in water reserves. The council hopes to find funds to replace others soon, or may consider borrowing from the general fund.

Capoccia hopes the project will help the city reach its target water conservation goal by reducing leaks.

Public works director Bruce Inman said there is not an easy or quick way to quantify how much water is lost due to the leaks to see how much that is affecting their conservation efforts. The city is split when meters are measured and both numbers are not gathered in the same month, noted Inman.

Despite the community’s extensive outreach and conservation efforts that began long before the state enacted new strict regulations, the city faces a fine from the State Water Resources Control Board for not meeting its target reduction of 32 percent for the last three months.

The city is working with state officials regarding the target and fine, but no final decisions have been made.

“We’re serious about meeting the target rate,” Capoccia said.

About 77 percent of residents met their conservation targets between July and October, according to city manager Elaine Aguilar.

Now the city plans to work with those who haven’t, though no meeting date has been set yet.

“First thing is to find out what’s keeping them from meeting the target. There could be something that we’re just unaware of,” Capoccia said. “We want to call them, find out what the problem is and work with them.”

The council also increased its penalty fees for excessive water use, though it will offer a one-time penalty waiver for customers with water leaks, once those leaks are fixed. It also recently voted to add unpaid administrative fines to customer’s water bills for incidents such as watering outside of allowed days.

The city has billed about $155,000 in penalties as of October, but not all have been collected. Capoccia hopes those monies will go toward fixing the city’s infrastructure, not the state fine.

“The state should understand too, every dollar we pay them in fines, is a dollar we can’t use to fix our problem,” he said. “Fines would be counterproductive.”

On top of facing the fine, spending three times more money on pumping their wells with imported water, and urgently fixing its aging infrastructure, the city is facing a revenue deficit of about $1 million when its Utility User’s Tax goes from 8 percent, currently, to 6 percent in July. An increase of the UUT to 10 percent is expected to go before voters next April.

Capoccia said he now sees things the city could have done years ago to help fix the infrastructure and better educate residents.

“The biggest problem for me is we don’t get enough information,” longtime resident James Foster said. “It worries me. Where are we going to come up with the money (to fix the water mains). I wish the city would just ask us for the money.”

Foster, who said he remodeled his house a few years ago to be more water-efficient, said he would be willing to give the city money through a tax or something similar and count it as a tax write-off.

“It’s an affluent town, people would contribute,” he said.

by The Associated Press, originally published on December 8, 2015

FRESNO, Calif. — In a trailer park tucked among irrigated orchards that help make California’s San Joaquin Valley the richest farm region in the world, 16-year-old Giselle Alvarez, one of the few English-speakers in the community of farmworkers, puzzles over the notices posted on front doors: There’s a danger in their drinking water.

Uranium, the notices warn, tests at a level considered unsafe by federal and state standards. The law requires the park’s owner to post the warnings. But they are awkwardly worded and mostly in English, a language few of the park’s dozens of Spanish-speaking families can read.

“It says you can drink the water – but if you drink the water over a period of time, you can get cancer,” said Alvarez, whose working-class family has no choice but keep drinking and cooking with the tainted tap water. “They really don’t explain.”

Uranium, the stuff of nuclear fuel for power plants and atom bombs, increasingly is showing in drinking water systems in major farming regions of the U.S. West – a natural though unexpected byproduct of irrigation, drought, and the overpumping of natural underground water reserves.

An Associated Press investigation in California’s central farm valleys – along with the U.S. Central Plains, among the areas most affected – found authorities are doing little to inform the public at large of the risk.

That includes the one out of four families on private wells in this farm valley who, unknowingly, are drinking dangerous amounts of uranium. Government authorities say long-term exposure to uranium can damage kidneys and raise cancer risks, and scientists say it can have other harmful effects.

In this swath of farmland, roughly 250 miles long and encompassing cities, up to one in 10 public water systems have raw drinking water with uranium levels that exceed safety standards, the U.S. Geological Survey has found.

More broadly, nearly 2 million people in California’s Central Valley and the U.S. Midwest live within a half-mile of groundwater containing uranium over the health limits, University of Nebraska researchers said in a study in September.

Entities ranging from state agencies to tiny rural schools are scrambling to deal with hundreds of tainted public wells.

That includes water wells at the Westport Elementary School, where 450 children study outside the Central California farm hub of Modesto.

At Westport’s playground, schoolchildren take a break from tether ball to sip from fountains marked with Spanish and English placards: “SAFE TO DRINK.”

The school is one of about 10 water-well systems in Central California that have installed on-site uranium removal facilities in recent years. Prices range from $65,000 to millions of dollars.

Just off Westport’s playground, a school maintenance chief jangles the keys to the school’s treatment operation, locked in a shed. Inside, a system of tubes, dials and canisters resembling scuba tanks removes up to a pound a year of uranium from the school’s well water.

The uranium gleaned from local water systems is handled like the nuclear material it is – taken away by workers in masks, gloves and other protective garments, said Ron Dollar, a vice president at Water Remediation Technology, a Colorado-based firm. It is then processed into nuclear fuel for power plants, Dollar said.

Before treatment, Westport’s water tests up to four times state and federal limits. After treatment, it’s safe for the children, teachers and staff to drink.

Meanwhile, the city of Modesto, with a half-million residents, recently spent more than $500,000 to start blending water from one contaminated well to dilute the uranium to safe levels. The city has retired a half-dozen other wells with excess levels of uranium.

State officials don’t track spending on uranium-contaminated wells. But the state’s Water Resources Control Board identified at least $16.7 million the state has spent since 2010 helping public water systems deal with high levels of uranium.

In coming years, more public water systems likely will be compelled to invest in such costly fixes, said Miranda Fram, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey in Sacramento.

Fram and her colleagues believe the amount of uranium increased in Central Valley drinking water supplies over the last 150 years with the spread of farming.

In California, as in the Rockies, mountain snowmelt washes uranium-laden sediment to the flatlands, where groundwater is used to irrigate crops.

Irrigation allows year-round farming, and the irrigated plants naturally create a weak acid that is leeching more and more uranium from sediment.

Groundwater pumping pulls the contaminated water down into the earth, where it is tapped by wells that supply drinking water.

The USGS calculates that the average level of uranium in public-supply wells of the eastern San Joaquin Valley increased 17 percent from 1990 to the mid-2000s. The number of public-supply wells with unsafe levels of uranium, meantime, climbed from 7 percent to 10 percent over the same period there.

“We should not have any doubts as to whether drinking water with uranium in it is a problem or not. It is,” said Doug Brugge, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. “The larger the population that’s drinking this water, the more people that are going to be affected.”

In California, changes in water standards since the late 2000s have mandated testing for uranium in public water systems.

For private well-owners and small water systems, however, officials were unable to point to any public health campaigns in the most-affected areas, or any help testing or dealing with uranium-contaminated wells.

“When it comes to private domestic wells, we do what we can to get the word out. It’s safe to say that there’s always more than can be done,” said John Borkovich, head of water quality at the state Water Resources Control Board.

The Associated Press commissioned independent sampling of wells at five homes in the countryside outside Modesto. The results: Water from two of the five private wells tested over the government maximums for uranium – in fact, two and three times the maximum.

None of the five families had ever heard that uranium could be a problem.

“It would be nice to be informed, so we can make an informed decision, and those wells can be tested,” said Michelle Norleen, one of the five, who was later relieved to learn her own water had tested safe.