Carmen Garza, 74, moved to the city of East Chicago, Indiana 41 years ago. She bought her house with her husband and quickly made it home, turning their backyard into a tomato and chili garden every summer. “They were so good,” Garza tells Colorlines in Spanish. “Riquísimos.” Three years ago, that ended after a neighbor asked the couple why they were growing vegetables in contaminated dirt. The Garzas quickly abandoned their garden. But they were left with more questions than answers: “She told me it was contaminated, but she didn’t say of what,” Garza recalls. The contaminant turned out to be lead, the couple ultimately found out thanks to community efforts to discover this information. And it’s not just in the dirt—it’s in the Garza’s drinking water, too. This is because East Chicago, a predominantly Black and Latinx city of nearly 30,000, is located on the USS Lead Superfund Site. The former USS Lead facility ran here until 1985. The site was placed on the National Priorities List of the worst contaminated sites in the country in 2009, but the EPA was aware since the facility’s closure that it was contaminating nearby areas, according to this 1985 inspection report. And as a Chicago Tribune investigation in December 2016 unearthed, government officials were warned that this contamination posed a public health risk for decades. Still, they failed to test the soil or begin cleanup efforts until 2014. That soil data didn’t make it into city officials’ hands until May 2016. With it, they saw how severe the problem really was: Some homeowner’s backyards had lead levels higher than 45,000 parts per million, far beyond the federal limit of 400 parts per million. No one told prospective buyers like Garza—not when she first bought her home or even when government officials came to inspect her yard about 10 years ago to “examine the dirt in people’s yards to clean for the animals,” as she says officials told her. She didn’t find out what was going on until last year when community members from the West Calumet Housing Complex started organizing around the issue. “Imagine you stop going outside,” Garza says. “You don’t grill steak outside anymore. What can I do? I don’t have money to move.” And…

While lead pipes were banned decades ago, they still supply millions of American households daily with drinking water amid risks of corrosion and leaching that can cause developmental and neurological effects in young children. One common abatement: Dig up old lead lines and replace a portion of them with another metal, such as copper. However, this technique can dislodge lead particulates and release them into the water supply. Furthermore, partially replacing the lead pipe connection instead of entirely exchanging it is problematic. A team of engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new way to model and track where lead particles might be transported during the partial-replacement process, in an effort to keep the water supply safer. “We all know lead is not safe, it needs to go,” said Assistant Vice Chancellor of International…

California in 2014 enacted the nation’s first drinking water standard for hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6.
Now with Vacaville, in Solano County 55 miles northeast of San Francisco, plotting the final pieces of a multimillion-dollar chromium 6 removal plan, environmentalists are demanding that the city stop telling its 92,000 residents that their water is safe.
“The city’s transport of chromium 6 in this case creates an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health or the environment,” the complaint states.
River Watch’s attorney Jack Silver in Sebastopol did not respond to an interview request Tuesday.
Prolonged exposure to chromium 6 increases the risk of lung cancer and asthma, particularly when it’s inhaled.
Recent tests revealed that five of Vacaville’s 11 groundwater wells exceed the new state standard, two of which have been in operation since the 1970s.
The city says there are no known cases of chromium 6-related cancers due to Vacaville’s groundwater and that the carcinogen occurs naturally in its water supply.
To comply with the 2020 deadline Vacaville plans to install chromium 6 filters valued at more than $1 million per well to some of its wells.
“The city is taking steps to provide water with hexavalent chromium at or below the maximum contaminant level.
The data do not account for water supplies contaminated with chromium 6, such as Vacaville’s five wells.

Harrietsfield homeowners struggling for more than a decade to deal with contaminated water have won a victory. The former operators of a recycling site last week lost their Supreme Court appeal of a provincial order directing them to test residential wells monthly for contamination. The operators, including the now-closed RDM Recycling, were ordered by the court to follow the ministerial orders implemented by the province’s minister of environment after claims surfaced that they had contaminated residential wells in the area. Lawyer Kaitlyn Mitchell and a co-worker with Ecojustice represented community members Marlene Brown, Melissa King and Angela Zwicker, who were interveners in the case. “The interveners argued that the ministerial orders should be upheld. The orders require those responsible for the contamination to undertake monitoring, studies and planning for remediation of the site,” wrote Mitchell in an email to the Chronicle Herald this week. The first appeal was dismissed in November, as appellants Roy Brown and Michael Lawrence, now deceased, tried to have the orders dismissed. They were upheld by Justice Denise Boudreau. “The inclusion of the appellants in this order is a possible, acceptable outcome, given the definitions provided in the Act. As such, I uphold…

The Nogales Unified School District is participating in a voluntary water testing program offered through the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality after district-sponsored water testing last August and September turned up excessive levels of lead and copper at Desert Shadows Middle School.
“Now this program through ADEQ is funding a water-screening program to test the drinking water at schools statewide, and as I mentioned, we are participating to test the drinking water at all of our schools once again.” ADEQ began offering water testing at Arizona public schools in January in response to nationwide concerns about the safety of drinking water for children.
The program is designed to identify any school drinking water with lead levels that could pose harm to students’ health so districts can address those issues.
The program, which provides water testing kits to schools at no cost, has identified elevated levels of lead at 24 of 118 schools tested to date, or one in five, according to a spreadsheet updated weekly on the ADEQ website.
Though NUSD already conducted tests of schools water sources independently within the last six months, the district is taking advantage of the opportunity to again analyze the safety of its water with multiple samples at each school in the coming weeks, Parra said.
Abundant caution When initial results from water testing conducted by the district last year showed elevated levels of lead and copper at Desert Shadows Middle School, the district immediately covered drinking fountains at the school and began providing bottled water for students and staff.
Even so, the district is continuing to provide filtered and bottled water at Desert Shadows in what Parra called “an abundance of caution.” Working with the Arizona School Facilities Board (ASFB) and Dominion Environmental Consultants, NUSD determined that hot water heaters were the likely cause of the problem.
Parra added that the district is also working with ASFB to replace water heaters at all 10 district schools, starting with Bracker Elementary School.
“We have a very smooth system in place,” said Desert Shadows Principal Joan Molera, who added that to cut down on the expense of disposable cups, she also asked the County Superintendent of Schools’ Office to provide each student with a reusable water bottle.
“I think it’s always important when we’re dealing with children, and educators also, to be on the cautionary side,” she said.

The plan includes a $5 billion bond for clean water projects and the creation of a new institute of public health experts, scientists and state officials that would set standards to address water contaminates.
The Senate and Assembly are both scheduled to pass budgets this week and must negotiate a budget compromise before April 1.
Creation of a New $5 Billion Clean Water Bond Act To help begin making real progress in addressing the state’s ongoing infrastructure crisis, the Senate is proposing a new $5 billion Clean Water Bond Act.
The Bond Act would provide critical funds for many different types of projects to prevent contamination that endangers public health and safety, clean up pollution, protect water sources, and promote the growth of the economy through infrastructure investment.
Support for the Proposed $2 Billion for Clean Water Infrastructure The proposal of a $5 Billion Bond Act is in addition to the Senate’s support of $2 billion allocated in the Executive Budget.
Establishment of a New Drinking Water Quality Institute A new Drinking Water Quality Institute is proposed by the Senate to address emerging contaminants affecting water supplies.
Creation of the Emerging Contamination Monitoring Act To help better protect public health and establish safety thresholds for drinking water contaminants, the Senate proposal establishes the Emerging Contamination Monitoring Act.
Support for $300 Million Environmental Protection Funding The Senate’s budget proposal continues the state’s record commitment to the protection of natural resources by concurring with the $300 million proposed in the Executive Budget for the Environmental Protection Fund.
Continued Funding for the Water Quality Infrastructure Investment Program For the past two years, Senate Republicans succeeded in securing additional funding above the Executive Budget proposal for critical water and environmental infrastructure improvements in the final budget.
Continued Funding for Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds The Senate’s budget proposal continues support for state-administered programs that continue providing low-cost financing and grants for the construction of water system projects and drinking water improvements in disadvantaged communities.

At toxic cleanup sites across the country, environmental agencies have allowed groundwater contamination to go untreated and slowly diminish over time — a strategy that saves money for polluters but could cost taxpayers dearly and jeopardize drinking water supplies.
Alvarez is particularly critical of the use of MNA at radioactive waste sites around the country, where it’s estimated that certain radionuclides will take millions of years to naturally degrade to safe levels.
It appears that most state environmental agencies, which supervise many cleanups, do not keep data on MNA use over the years.
“Their only source of drinking water is groundwater.” More than $100 million already has been spent on an active cleanup of the pollution over the years.
But contaminants are continuing to spread, and the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the agency overseeing the cleanup, claims that they won’t reach safe levels for up to 500 years if MNA is applied as proposed by the Air Force.
That directive, and the EPA’s updated guidelines, state that MNA shouldn’t be applied when, among other things, the source of pollutants isn’t yet under control, when the tainted groundwater still is spreading and when the contaminants won’t break down to safe levels within a “reasonable” period.
At some Superfund sites, critics say, MNA has been applied in circumstances that clearly violate the agency’s guidelines.
While EPA guidelines call for MNA only where pollution will degrade to safe levels within a reasonable period, it is one of the techniques being used at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southwestern Washington State along the Columbia River.
Cheryl Whalen, an official regulating the cleanup for the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program, downplayed environmental concerns about the plume.
“Monitored Natural Attenuation says, ‘we’re not going to do anything because it costs too much money,’” she said.

What’s in the water?
“But what is seen as progress for some has been a nightmare for us.” In their neighborhood, where about 30 homes’ water supplies come from private wells, homeowners can’t drink their own water.
Started with explosions The well water troubles began about the time of the blasts, Eichner said.
Just about a year ago, the Eichners, and others on County Line Road, received a letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation explaining that a controlled explosion would happen in the near future and home water testing would be conducted for anyone within 1,500 feet of the blast area.
“At the time we were still drinking the water.
The results of the tests were compared and some wells had elevated levels of turbidity and solids — the water was cloudy.” A troubling time lapse Homeowners on County Line Road began receiving results of the water testing in February, months after the second round of testing, Jeff Eichner said.
If they knew what the reports meant, why didn’t they let people know their wells were affected?
Asked about that, Dave Thompson, spokesman for PennDOT, said, “The post-blast results have a one-page summary for the individual well showing the results of many of the tests as well as typical drinking water standards for some of the results.
“From the time we built the house in 1997 until this construction work, we hadn’t had to replace the well pump,” Valery said.
Homeowners should keep careful records of any expenses they are incurring as a result of bad drinking water.

Study finds small public wells in Minnesota have viruses, bacteria.
ST. PAUL — Bacteria and viruses that could make people sick have been discovered in small public drinking water wells across the state, according to a report released Friday by the Minnesota Department of Health.
The study, ordered by the state Legislature in 2014, found that, while the overall presence of microbial indicators in samples was low, a high percentage of wells had at least one detection.
But 37 percent of systems had DNA-like evidence of human viruses and 89 percent of systems had evidence of microbes, including some that don’t cause human illness, detected at least once.
They also don’t know if there is any widespread human health risk for people drinking from wells that test positive — whether people drinking that water are getting sick.
“That’s part of the work we still have to do: looking at the wells, potential sources of contamination and other factors, and figuring out how the contamination is occurring and what can be done about it.” None of the wells involved serve municipal water supply systems — those larger systems require treatment to kill viruses and bacteria.
There are about 1,500 of those small, public systems across the state that don’t treat their water, officials said Friday.
Finding such evidence of microbes in a drinking water system does not necessarily mean that those consuming water from these systems would become ill. “We continue to analyze the results of the study to get a better sense of the potential risk,” said Paul Allwood, assistant state health commissioner, in a statement Friday.
The 2014 Minnesota Legislature directed the Health Department to conduct a groundwater virus monitoring project using funding from the state’s Clean Water Fund.
The Health Department recommends that both public and private water systems continue to maintain their wells and conduct routine testing of their water supply.