Groups ask EPA to ensure East Chicago has safe water.
Several community groups petitioned the EPA on Thursday to immediately act to protect residents from lead in their drinking water.
According to the petition, the East Chicago Water Department and Indiana Department of Environmental Management have failed to adequately address the problem in the short-term, so the Environmental Protection Agency should use its emergency powers.
Up to 90 percent of East Chicago’s water lines could be lead, so residents should assume they have lead pipes and use a properly certified faucet filter, EPA said.
‘Until the water is safe to drink’ EPA has identified East Chicago as an environmental justice community, in part, because many of its residents are poor, said Anjali Waikar, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
City, state and federal officials have rightly focused on addressing contamination in the soil of the Superfund site, the petition said.
EPA provided water filters and bottled water to residents at the 43 homes it tested, but no government agency has provided filters or bottled water to other East Chicago water system customers.
EPA has said little to no orthophosphate, a chemical used to prevent lead from leaching into water from lead service lines, was found in the city’s water.
IDEM has confirmed it is working with the city to adjust chemical levels.
Several actions requested In addition to providing filters or bottled water, the petition asks EPA to immediately conduct citywide testing of drinking water, implement a program to ensure filters are properly installed and maintained, ensure the city’s compliance with the federal Lead and Copper Rule, use its authority to review the city’s corrosion control requirements, replace faucets in residents’ homes as needed, expand blood testing of children under age 7 who are enrolled in Medicaid or are otherwise at-risk, and order any other necessary relief.

Borough presidents want NYC to provide bottled water, other measures at schools testing high for lead.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams joined the city’s other borough presidents in a letter to NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, urging the Department of Education (DOE) to take “immediate action” regarding elevated levels of lead in the drinking water at some New York City public schools.
Children are particularly vulnerable to lead exposure because harmful effects occur at lower exposure levels in children than in adults.
The “vast majority” of test results were not elevated, according to DOE.
Some local schools that were found to have elevated levels of lead in one or more of their fixtures include P.S.
8 in Brooklyn Heights (four out of 89 water samples), P.S.
29 in Cobble Hill (one out of 73 samples); Automotive High School in Bedford Stuyvesant (31 out of 144 samples); P.S.
They also want schools to offer free lead exposure testing for kids, install water filtration systems to prevent future contamination, and implement lead testing on a regular basis.
“Parents can rest assured that water in schools is safe for students and staff to drink, and there is no need for bottled water,” DOE spokesperson Toya Holness told the Brooklyn Eagle.
“New York City’s drinking water is of the highest quality and the water delivered from the upstate reservoir system is lead free,” she said.

Hundreds of current and former Bucks and Montgomery residents are party to a mass tort lawsuit for personal injury claims against six manufacturers of firefighting foams.
A writ of summons was filed Feb. 22 in Montgomery County court by Norristown law firm Creedon & Feliciani and others, on behalf of 461 current and former residents and individuals who worked or served on a trio of military bases in the area.
On Wednesday, Creedon & Feliciani stated in a post on its Facebook page that the plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages “as a result of their suffering from injuries/diseases they believe are caused by ingestion, etc.
of water polluted with the chemicals PFOA and PFOS.” The mass tort personal injury suit is separate from several class action lawsuits related to the contamination that have been filed by some of the same firms against the military and foam manufacturers.
Four of the class action suits make similar claims against the foam manufacturers: that their product was defective; that the companies had “known or should have known” the dangers of selling it; and that the companies failed to recall or warn users after its toxicity was established.
However, the class action suits make no reference to seeking awards for personal injuries.
Instead, they focus on winning a blood-testing program and health study, medical monitoring, a private well testing program, and for financial hardships such as cleaning up individual properties or water supplies.
Last month the plaintiffs in the class action suits asked the court to allow them to combine into a single case, and the firms involved are currently preparing a combined complaint, Feliciani said.
New York City law firm Weitz & Luxenberg is interim class counsel, meaning they will serve as a representative of the plaintiffs and firms from each of the individual cases until the court makes a decision about the class action status of the combined case.
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(Slide through timeline for more information on the lead problem on campus) The issue of water contaminated with lead coming from Sacramento State’s drinking fountains and faucets goes back longer than the university had previously indicated, and a second phase of testing is set to begin.
Foran said he does not know what happened to the water sources in the Children’s Center, as he was told by the university that University Enterprises, Inc. — not Sac State — owns the Children’s Center, and would not allow Foran’s group to return, though he was told they would remediate the situation.
27 water sources were above 15 parts per billion, which is the EPA action level, meaning they legally must be shut off.
Additionally, the university sent out an email last week saying that after recent testing, all food establishments on campus have water sources under the EPA action level, but the final report on specific lead amounts have not come back.
Foran said the only responsible standard to use in his view is the California Public Health Goal, .2 ppb.
That’s a pretty big leap.” According to Foran, knowing where the untested sources are isn’t easy because the testing group was never provided with a comprehensive list of water sources on campus in the first place; the group made one on its own, and suspected it to be incomplete from the beginning.
When the testing group arrived there, it was told by officials that the suite dorm rooms could not be tested because residents were currently living there.
Sac State, under the direction of Parker, is choosing not to do so just yet without more comprehensive water testing.
Parker said at the time of the hiring that her goal was “using all professional standards in the profession of sampling, for occupational exposure, to make a definitive determination of what the water levels are first.” Foran believes that this step being taken by Parker and the university is unnecessary for multiple reasons.
“To me, the bigger issue here is that there are something on the order of almost 380 fountains and faucets on this campus that have lead concentrations above the California Public Health Goal,” Foran said.

More than four years after a WPX Energy Appalachia wastewater impoundment leaked and contaminated the drinking water of five Westmoreland County families, the shale gas company has agreed to pay the state a $1.2 million penalty.
But the families still don’t have sufficient, permanent water supplies, said Melissa Marshall, community advocate for the Mountain Watershed Association, an environmental organization.
It is next to Donegal Lake, which drains into Loyalhanna Creek, a tributary of the Allegheny River.
“We quickly worked to rectify the situation from its onset, immediately emptying and ultimately closing a containment pond for recycled water as soon as we became aware of potential issues,” Mr. Swan said.
“Importantly, no individual’s health was ever at risk even by the most stringent state and EPA standards,” he said.
The company also installed single-faucet water filtration systems in the five homes, but according to Ms. Marshall, those systems don’t provide enough water.
The families, who live near Stahlstown, must supplement the filtered water with bottled water.
“The filtration systems are completely insufficient in providing for the water needs of the families, and that’s been true for years,” Ms. Marshall said.
This settlement doesn’t help the residents, who are still in dire need.” She said DEP consent orders issued over the past three years requiring WPX to replace the permanent residential water supplies don’t specify the amounts of water the company needs to provide, and the filtration systems the company installed in the five residences don’t come close to meeting the families’ needs.
“My interview notes say that on the high end, one family estimated the reverse osmosis system made three gallons every six hours.

New law forces public water companies to alert customers of lead contamination within 24 hours.
Public water systems must notify their customers within 24 hours of detecting dangerous levels of lead under a new federal law.
Those states have passed their own laws requiring faster notifications.
Because water utilities are already required to notify customers for other contaminants, alerting them to high lead levels should already be in place for most utilities, Dan Hartnett, director of legislative affairs at the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, told Governing.
It can damage the brain, red blood cells and kidneys, and can cause lifelong developmental and behavioral problems.
Recently, several schools in Lancaster County found lead in water in drinking fountains or sinks.
Some were supplied by public water companies and some of the drinking water testing high for lead came from wells.
The changes in federal law will add lead to a list of contaminants that public water utilities are already required to notify their customers about if dangerous levels are detected.
Those contaminants include E. coli, waterborne diseases and high levels of nitrates.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to clarify the timeline in the coming months.

Cairo, 27 February 2017 – The World Health Organization (WHO) is scaling up its response in Somalia to provide critical health services for 1.5 million people currently affected by severe drought conditions and a worsening food crisis.
However, the Organization urgently requires US$ 10 million as part of the United Nations appeal for the first 6 months of 2017.
The humanitarian situation in Somalia continues to deteriorate, and there is a high risk that the country will face its third famine in 25 years.
More than 6.2 million people – half of the total population – are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, including almost 3 million facing a food security crisis.
Nearly 5.5 million people are at risk of contracting waterborne diseases, more than half of whom are women and children under 5 years of age.
Acute drought in many parts of Somalia has reduced the availability of clean water sources, and the food crisis has given way to malnutrition.
Drought conditions have increased the spread of epidemic-prone diseases such as acute watery diarrhoea, cholera and measles.
In the first 7 weeks of 2017, over 6000 cases and 65 deaths by acute watery diarrhoea/ cholera have been reported, and a total of 2578 cases of suspected measles were reported as of September 2016.
“Less than half of the population in Somalia has access to basic health services.
For more information: Rana Sidani Senior Communication Officer Direct: +20 2 22765552 Mobile: +20 1099756506 E-mail: sidanir@who.int

Box Elder County may be at risk for water contamination.
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BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah — Many people in Box Elder County are still pumping water out of their basements, after weeks of flooding, but now the Bear River Health Department is worried about drinking water possibly being contaminated with harmful bacteria.
"This is bigger than normal so we don’t know how contaminated things are going to be and that’s why we are offering this testing so we can kind of get a handle on what’s out there," said Sarah Cheshire, who tests water samples with the Bear River Health Department.
Bear River said anyone with a private well who was affected by flooding is at risk.
"If you have bacteria in your water it can potentially make you sick, you could have nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and those sorts of symptoms."
"I think it’s a legitimate concern that people ought to take a look and see what’s going on in their own houses," said Summers.
The health department said just eyeballing the water isn’t good enough.
"We have dosages and charts that will tell us how much depending on how deep or shallow the well is, how much water is flowing through there," said Cheshire.

La Mesa Spring Valley District Providing Students With Bottled Water.
The La Mesa-Spring Valley School district is providing students with bottled water pending results of water quality tests, the superintendent confirmed Monday.
The drinking water closures follow NBC7’s coverage of water quality concerns at two other school districts in San Diego County.
"We are in the process of testing and are providing bottled water until we have the results."
Marshall said the water closure was prompted by knowledge that a San Ysidro school had tested positive for lead "and our desire to make sure all of our water is safe for our students."
All but one school in the La Mesa-Spring Valley School district were built before 1986, which health experts say are more likely to have lead piping and may have lead in the water.
NBC 7 mapped out where schools in the county built before 1986 are located, and found they are spread out throughout the region.
Marshall said the cost of the water will be about $1,000 per week and the cost of testing will be about $250 to $500 per school, depending on the number of samples taken at the site.
He said district officials hope to have the results next week.
Earlier this month, NBC7 reported on the discovery of dangerous levels of lead in water at a San Ysidro elementary school.

WPX Energy Appalachia has paid a $1.2 million civil penalty for oil and gas violations that affected groundwater and private water supplies in Westmoreland County.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said money from the penalty will go to the state’s well plugging fund, which plugs abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells that have the potential to cause health, safety or environmental concerns.
The penalty amount is based on the impacts to the water supplies and the severity of the leak, according to the DEP.
In September 2012, testing of five private water supplies indicated that they were impacted by a leak from WPX Energy Appalachia’s on-site impoundment into the groundwater.
The DEP said the impoundment was drained within a week of the leak being discovered.
Affected households were provided bottled water and treatment systems have been installed.
The DEP said it regularly evaluates those systems to ensure they are providing safe drinking water.
In addition to the civil penalty, DEP said the company is required to conclude the investigation into the extent of the impacts and remediate the site in accordance with Pennsylvania’s Land Recycling and Environmental Remediation Standards Act.
This will include remediation of the soil, groundwater, and any surface waters impacted by the leak.
State regulators hope to address the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s warning of "serious public health implications" due to inadequate drinking water oversight by raising $7.5 million in new fees paid by public water systems.