Like Local 3 News on Facebook: President Trump signed the 2019 Military Policy Bill into law.
One of the measures aims to stop water contamination at military bases.
A fire-fighting foam used on military bases has literally poisoned the well.
The foam contains chemicals which have been linked to cancer and other health issues.
He adds, "We’re now seeing more and more incidents where this is getting into drinking water, contaminating it and people are suffering as a result of that."
Peters worked to include a provision in the 2019 defense bill, that encourages the Defense Department to use firefighting foams without the chemicals, known as PFAS.
He says, "We can never take safe drinking water for granted.
Earlier this year, the Department of Defense told us it was working to address the problem, and make sure military bases and surrounding areas had access to safe drinking water.
Lynn Thorp with the Clean Water Action says, "Any further information we can get about health effects is very, very important to be able to make sound decisions about these chemicals."
The EPA says it’s examining PFAS in drinking water and is working on cleanup recommendations for the contaminated sites.

In Warminster and surrounding towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and at other sites around the United States, the foams once used routinely in firefighting training at military bases contained per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
states.
That was before testing showed it had some of the highest levels of the toxic compounds of any public water system in the U.S. “You all made me out to be a liar,” Hagey, general water and sewer manager in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Warminster, told Environmental Protection Agency officials at a hearing last month.
The meeting drew residents and officials from Horsham and other affected towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and officials from some of the other dozens of states dealing with the same contaminants.
Earlier this year, federal toxicologists decided that even the EPA’s 2016 advisory levels for the two phased-out versions of the compound were several times too high for safety.
Even as the Trump administration says it advocates for clean air and water, it is ceding more regulation to the states and putting a hold on some regulations seen as burdensome to business.
In Horsham and surrounding towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and at other sites around the United States, the foams once used routinely in firefighting training at military bases contained PFAS.
The chemical industry says it believes the versions of the nonstick, stain-resistant compounds in use now are safe, in part because they don’t stay in the body as long as older versions.
“If the risk appears to be high, and you’ve got it every place, then you’ve got a different level” of danger and urgency, Clough said.
In 2005, under President George W. Bush, the EPA and DuPont settled an EPA complaint that the chemical company knew at least by the mid-1980s that the early PFAS compound posed a substantial risk to human health.

In Warminster and surrounding towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and at other sites around the United States, the foams once used routinely in firefighting training at military bases contained per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
That was before testing showed it had some of the highest levels of the toxic compounds of any public water system in the U.S. “You all made me out to be a liar,” Hagey, general water and sewer manager in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Warminster, told Environmental Protection Agency officials at a hearing last month.
The meeting drew residents and officials from Horsham and other affected towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and officials from some of the other dozens of states dealing with the same contaminants.
At “community engagement sessions” around the country this summer like the one in Horsham, residents and state, local and military officials are demanding that the EPA act quickly — and decisively — to clean up local water systems testing positive for dangerous levels of the chemicals, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
Earlier this year, federal toxicologists decided that even the EPA’s 2016 advisory levels for the two phased-out versions of the compound were several times too high for safety.
In Horsham and surrounding towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and at other sites around the United States, the foams once used routinely in firefighting training at military bases contained PFAS.
The chemical industry says it believes the versions of the nonstick, stain-resistant compounds in use now are safe, in part because they don’t stay in the body as long as older versions.
In Delaware, National Guard troops handed out water after high levels of PFAS were found in a town’s water supply.
“If the risk appears to be high, and you’ve got it every place, then you’ve got a different level” of danger and urgency, Clough said.
In 2005, under President George W. Bush, the EPA and DuPont settled an EPA complaint that the chemical company knew at least by the mid-1980s that the early PFAS compound posed a substantial risk to human health.

IOSCO COUNTY, Mich., (WPBN/WGTU) — A northern Michigan school district will be receiving a grant to make sure they have safe drinking water for the upcoming school year.
On Monday, Congressman Dan Kildee announced the Oscoda Area Schools will received the $50,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The money will help pay to change the school’s water source and connect it to an existing Au Sable Township water main after Per- and Polyfluroalkyl Substances (PFAS) were found near the school’s current water supply.
“Ensuring my constituents, including Oscoda residents, have access to clean drinking water is one of my top priorities in Congress.
“We must do more to urgently address PFAS contamination, as well as provide safe drinking water to those affected.” Officials found plumes of PFAS were recently found on Oscoda Area Schools’ River Road campus, putting the school well in danger of being contaminated if the plumes moved.
Reports show Congressman Kildee has repeatedly pushed the Trump Administration and all levels of government to more urgently address PFAS contamination across the country.
In July, Kildee and Congressman Fred Upton lead a bipartisan letter calling the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen protections fore PFAS in drinking water.
Earlier this year, Kildee testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Veterans’ Affairs Committee to urge the DoD and Congress to do more to clean up toxic contamination, including around former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda.
Additionally, Congressman Kildee, along with Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, worked to include language authorizing a health study on PFAS exposure in the National Defense Authorization Act, which became law in December 2017.
In March 2018, the three lawmakers successfully included funding to address ongoing drinking water contamination issues in the Fiscal Year 2018 budget bill.

Physician colleagues at Hurley Medical Center, where Hanna-Attisha is director of the Pediatric Public Health Initiative, voted in May to banish the words “lead poisoned” to describe what happened after the city switched its water source to the Flint River in April 2014 as a money-saving measure.
He argued that the increase in Flint children’s blood lead levels was not significant, and that the term “lead poisoning” stigmatizes an entire generation of Flint children.
"But at the same time, we have learned so much —and we now know about the population-level sub-clinical impact.
After more than a year of denials by state and city officials that the water was unfit for human consumption, Hanna-Attisha released in September 2015 her initial research that showed a statistically significant increase in the number of Flint kids with elevated blood levels after the water switch.
After the switch, the percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels above the federal "reference level" of 5 micrograms per deciliter was nearly double.
"And so they mix the formula every day, six to eight times a day, and feed their infant, and the water is lead contaminated."
Asked if he agrees that infants consuming water-mixed formula were most in danger of high levels of lead exposure, Gomez said, "(W)e currently don’t have any scientific research to support that."
"That’s what public health is all about.
By contrast, Gomez’s studied 15,817 blood lead levels of Flint children taken over 10 years.
At levels below that, lead robs the average child of about half an IQ point.

Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or recreational purposes.
“Ninety per cent of households in Nigeria consume contaminated water and other impure substances,” according to a report by the multiple indicator cluster.
Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies, usually as a result of human activities.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in low and middle-income countries, 38 per cent of health care facilities lack an improved water source, 19 per cent do not have improved sanitation, and 35 per cent lack water and soap for hand washing.
“globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces, accounting for about 502 000 diarrhoeal deaths each year and by 2025 half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas,” says WHO.
However, contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to transmission of diseases, some of the more commonly reported problems experienced from drinking impure water includes :cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio.
This is particularly the case in health care facilities where both patients and staff are placed at additional risk of infection and disease when water, sanitation, and hygiene services are lacking,” says WHO.
Inadequate management of urban, industrial, and agricultural wastewater means the drinking-water of hundreds of millions of people is dangerously contaminated or chemically polluted.
Diarrhoea is the most widely known disease linked to contaminated food and water but there are other hazards.
The aim of the scheme is to ensure that products protect users from the pathogens that cause diarrhoeal disease and to strengthen policy, regulatory, and monitoring mechanisms at the national level to support appropriate targeting and consistent and correct use of such products.

About 88 percent of Nebraska residents rely on groundwater to provide their drinking water.
State and national agencies impose specific regulations.
On the positive side, stronger water-purification capability and improved fertilizer practices in some parts of the state have helped reduce the number of occasions where nitrate levels are above the safe-drinking threshold, requiring local water systems to take remedial action.
In some parts of the state, the nitrate concentration in groundwater has risen to troubling levels.
The Little Blue NRD in southeast Nebraska has designated eight “water quality management areas” to address nitrate concerns.
Some examples: » In the Little Blue NRD, 75 percent of reporting ag producers are applying more nitrogen than recommended by specialists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
» In some parts of the Little Blue NRD, nitrate levels “exceed the maximum contaminant level of 10 ppm (parts per million)” considered the safe limit for drinking water.
» In the 756-square-mile area of northeast Nebraska covered by the four-NRD cooperative plan, average nitrate concentrations since 1980 “have increased, with some areas (having) three times the levels safe for drinking water,” the NRDs report.
The natural resources districts, the university, DEQ, the Nebraska Environmental Trust and federal agencies provide technical or financial help to agricultural producers to reduce nitrates and other water-quality concerns.
Conservation steps include adjusted application levels or schedules, avoidance of overwatering, use of cover crops, decommissioning of old wells, proper maintenance of septic systems and wetland restoration.

TREMONT — Contaminated wells are costing the town money and the fix recommended by the state would be a major expense for taxpayers.
“We have installed six [water filtration] systems at the town’s expense in the last year,” Town Manager Chris Saunders said in an interview.
“There’s just not good water in the area.” Those water filtration systems are one solution to the problem with contaminated water that has plagued the town for a decade.
In 2008, the DEP tested 14 private wells in the neighborhood of Flat Iron Road and Harbor Drive.
The DEP’s Maine Landfill Closure and Remediation Program helped the town with the cost of the bottled water program until 2016.
A water filtration system was installed at the Town Office within the last month and came with a price tag of approximately $12,000, Saunders said.
Qualifying test results receive 90 percent funding reimbursement from the DEP’s remediation program for water filtration systems.
When contaminants were found in the Town Office water supply, the state determined it did not qualify for remediation funding.
The state program only reimburses for landfill contamination.” In the early months of 2017, the DEP concluded that the town’s storage of salt and its use on winter roads was contributing to the contamination of area wells.
Cost of the water filtration systems depends on several factors, including level of use, water quality and the size of the system.

BOZEMAN — Two Montana men who ran a now-defunct ammunition company have pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges over the dumping of lead-contaminated wastewater into the Bozeman sewer system.
The defendants are scheduled for separate sentencings in November before U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen.
Prosecutors will recommend that each man receives five years of probation and a $50,000 fine under a plea deal.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigators began a probe of the company’s waste disposal practices after a 2013 Department of Labor investigation into lead exposure of workers at the company.
The spent casings were sorted by individual caliber and cleaned, with the wastewater collected in 300-gallon containers.
The city’s pretreatment coordinator granted USA Brass limited authorization to discharge 10 to 25 gallons of lead wastewater into the sewer daily, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported.
The company also didn’t filter the water.
Flanagan and Schimpf were in charge of day-to-day operations of the company, which had about 20 employees.
In 2014, USA Brass was sued by eight employees who said they were intentionally exposed to hazardous levels of lead at the business.
The lawsuit was dismissed in the spring of 2016 at the request of the company and plaintiffs.

“The water comes out of the tap white, and sometimes dark and dirty, with particles in it,” she said.
“Before the hurricane, the water wasn’t like that.
An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spokesman said there were “no indications that contaminated material left the facility” and infected Arecibo’s drinking water supply during the storm.
But local residents are taking no chances.
His own home was wrecked by the hurricane and he spends much of what little money he has on bottled water.
“There’s no way I’d drink the water here.
All the money that came to Puerto Rico wasn’t properly administered; it should be used to fix the things that need fixing.” Ben Bostick, a water quality expert at Columbia University, recently traveled to Puerto Rico to test water quality near three Superfund sites, including the battery plant.
In the wake of the hurricane, people desperate for water pried open wells at a contaminated site near Dorado but little information has been publicly released on water quality since.
I would say around 20% of the houses we sampled were empty because the people didn’t live in the building due to a lack of a reliable water supply.” The EPA said that virtually all Puerto Ricans supplied by the island’s water authority had “reliable drinking water”.
An EPA spokesman said: “Many will need federal assistance in order to restore reliable uninterrupted power and full system operation.