Millions In U.S. Drink Contaminated Water, Records Show

nytimes.com:

More than 20 percent of the nation's water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[Aaror]

02:57 PM on 12/09/2009

What is life worth?
Airlines base their maintenance schedules around a life being worth $80 million, give or take. Other surveys give similar numbers.
How about we use a simple rule for pollution. If a company pollutes, they pay $80 million per life their pollution ends. If they dump a chemical that kills 1/million in a river that 5000 people drink from, they pay $80 million/1 million times 5000 or $400,000 a year for the pollution.
Of course, companies will need insurance in case their pollution turns out to be more deadly then expected...
Doing that would suddenly make putting dangerous chemicals in our drinking water, air, and food far less economical.

[derrickhoyle]

02:09 PM on 12/08/2009

There are many places in the west where groundwater has naturally occurring concentrations of arsenic, and the cost to strip the arsenic down to the extremely low levels that the Safe Drinking Water Act requires. No one is willing to either come up with the large sums of money to strip out the arsenic or the large sums of money to supply an imported water source for these communities.

[Aaror]

12:20 PM on 12/09/2009

"cost to strip the arsenic down to the extremely low levels that the Safe Drinking Water Act requires"

You mean the level where "only," 1 in 600 people who drink the water get cancer?
Imagine a city of 600, tell them that it is too expensive to treat their water, so one of them will die from cancer in the next couple years. You think anyone will mind?
I remember when I was living in Alaska they changed the water laws from 1 death per million for a certain type of pollutant to 1 in 100,000 to save a mine money. The mine dumped their waste into a stream that fed Anchorage, population 250K. The law change meant that 2 people died to save the mine a few hundred thousand bucks a year.
Was it worth it?

[derrickhoyle]

05:18 PM on 12/09/2009

I was not talking about water sources polluted by anthropogenic activities, I'm talking about groundwater that has arsenic from weathering of rock. Yes, the mine should have to shell out the money. I don't argue with you there.

[jsarets]

01:56 PM on 12/08/2009

For $260 + $40/yr, you can have a 5-stage reverse osmosis system for your home.

This is the same technology used to make the better-quality brands of bottled water.

It removes 99% of contaminants down to 0.0001 microns.

I own and recommend this one, which is made in America from the best-quality parts:

http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/ro-45-detail.htm

Contaminated water is the largest contributor to illness, even in the developed world, since the waste byproducts of industrial civilization have increasingly compromised freshwater sources.

Providing clean drinking water is now more difficult than it was when the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed and getting harder all the time. These rising costs have been externalized by the polluters who caused them.

We don't have the pumping capacity to push the entire municipal water supply through reverse osmosis membranes, and it wouldn't be a wise use of energy to do so.

The municipal water supply is arguably pure enough for washing and other applications. It's just not clean enough for drinking and food preparation -- a fraction of total water consumption.

Ideally we'd have separate treatment and delivery infrastructure for drinking water, but we don't.

Therefore, property owners are left with the responsibility to filter municipal water for consumption.

Food service institutions should be required by law to have suitable filtration systems, and household expenditures on water filtration should be tax-deductible.

The government can't provide us with safe drinking water. It's an unfortunate reality.

[BannedNBoston]

01:53 PM on 12/08/2009

Filter your water.

[eyelashviper]

01:30 PM on 12/08/2009

The anti-government, anti-regulation, laissez faire, pro-corporation policies of the Bush_ Administration basically gave carte blanche to corporate polluters and brought enforcement to a standstill for 8 years. It will be awhile before all the agencies are once again staffed and working to enforce regulations that still stand, so we cannot be surprised at the news about toxic water, poisoned food, dangerous products and environmental destruction. To the masses who have concerns about lead, mercury, arsenic, or whatever else in our drinking water, W and his cohorts would say, "let em drink champagne".

[ssol4569]

01:58 PM on 12/08/2009

Oh that's right, we've only had "corporate polluters" since the year 2000. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Once again...blinded by ideology.

[eyelashviper]

04:01 PM on 12/08/2009

Try reading and thinking before commenting. Serious pollution has been an issue for far too many years, but the last admin deregulated as much as they possibly could, and refused to enforce policies that had been in place for generations. Do a bit of research on the EPA, the FDA, FEMA, etc., and see what they actually did and did not do in the 8 years of Bush & friends.

[LeftLeaner]

12:03 PM on 12/08/2009

I'd like to know which agency(ies) at this time is doing their job of protecting the American public, whether it be the EPA, FDA, etc.

Please someone name one.

That was "once" their purpose - to regulate - not anymore.

These positions have become nothing more than crony campaign pay-back positions as rewards for campaign $$$ support.

We, the American pubic have no representation remaining at ANY level of government.

It's over!

[ssol4569]

03:18 PM on 12/08/2009

I agree and so does 41% of the rest of the population.

[CaliGrown78]

11:57 AM on 12/08/2009

Oh come on people you didn't actually think the gubmint cared if we drank this crap did you?

[ssol4569]

12:17 PM on 12/08/2009

No and I think that's one of the big differences between the left and the right. The right believes the government is much to powerful and "Almighty" and are absorbing our freedoms by the second and the left wants to give government even more control. My big question is why would anyone want to do that? And I'm not pointing to any administration in particular (for the record). Go ahead, jump all over me, I'm going to lunch.

[lightningbolt]

11:30 AM on 12/08/2009

This is why I always filter my drinking water. It also makes the water taste better.

[ssol4569]

11:28 AM on 12/08/2009

Chlorine & fluoride, from our drinking water, are the primary suspects behind thyroid disease.

[VINER]

12:02 PM on 12/08/2009

yes - "chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances" are found in the "flouride" we are told is safe that is added to drinking water. The fact is that for the most part, the substance added to our water is not pharmaceutical grade "fluoride" but a toxic waste (hydrofluorosilicic acid) from the fertilizer industry.
-v

[LastAngryWoman]

11:28 AM on 12/08/2009

We have similar issues in Canada.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Toxic+chemical+levels+higher+water+downstream+Alberta+oilsands+plants/2313109/story.html

We also have lovely ways to 'recycle'. In Ontario, the government, for the past 30 years, has actually paid farmers to allow waste (sludge) to be dumped on their crop fields as fertilizer. It's a win win. The gov't finds a way to get rid of waste and the farmer gets fertilizer.

The fact that no one tests levels of heavy metals, prescription meds or anything else is apparently of no great concern. Private citizens of late have begun testing it and found levels much higher than what is considered 'safe'. Of course, gov't and farmers deny these findings. But they don't have any tests to confirm their denials.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, I and my family must trust that everyone knows what they're doing.

[SamKnause]

11:20 AM on 12/08/2009

This is no surprise. Corporations are in the drivers seat. They do not follow regulations, they lobby against regulations and they bribe our government to get what they want. It always boils down to the bottom line. It costs money to do business the right and safe way. When corporations own the government they never do what is right or safe. They have been polluting and poisoning our planet for years, they know every loop hole to avoid paying taxes, and our government continues to enable them to get away with it. Every problem in this world can be traced to greed and power grabbing. It is as if they don't realize they live on the very planet they are destroying.

[ssol4569]

11:30 AM on 12/08/2009

So then why would we trust government to fix the same problem they enable?

[SamKnause]

07:49 PM on 12/08/2009

I don't think my post said anything about trusting the government? Our government is so corrupt I don't think they can be trusted with anything.

[jsarets]

11:35 AM on 12/08/2009

Water systems in America are, more often than not, run by public municipalities.

[SamKnause]

07:52 PM on 12/08/2009

Environmental protection laws are usually passed at the federal level. I guess I should say they are not passed at any level and no corporation follows or abides by the laws. It doesn't matter if it is city, state, or federal government, the corruption has embedded itself at all levels.

[SimJack]

10:29 AM on 12/08/2009

There's a proposal to foist a 'toilet to tap' water conservation program on residents in California which I'm sure will work out really well. It will provide jobs to people who are experienced at picking up terds by the clean end.

[hellboundtrain]

10:17 AM on 12/08/2009

Find out everything you can about fracking. No wonder we have water with rapidly declining quality.

Will the quality ever be able to maintained again? Perhaps not, as the fracking contaminants stay in the stone beneath the aquifers.

Congress left the chemicals used in fracking out of the Clean Water Act! How is that for the Representatives taking care of their constituents?

Do your research. Verify.

[harveyr2]

10:15 AM on 12/08/2009

Shock, government doesn't work.

Shock, it's all Bush's fault.

Shock, Obama will make government even bigger and everything will be alright.

Shock, liberals still believe this line of reasoning.

[NC4Obama]

11:17 AM on 12/08/2009

Not so much about making the government bigger but having the EPA do its job would sure help out quite a bit.

[LeftLeaner]

12:06 PM on 12/08/2009

It would be helpful if "any" agency did what they were supposed to, but most of the people running these agencies came from the industries they are now to supposed to turn around and regulate.

It's utter insanity.

[Telemachus]

11:22 AM on 12/08/2009

Shock, you now have to pay for the privilege of having clean water after some corporation has helped itself to the privilege of polluting YOUR water, for free.

Shock, teabaggers still don't recognize this as socialism.

[peteRed]

09:59 AM on 12/08/2009

slowly, the world polluters are discovering the dark side of pollution! but hey, at least you are the land of freedom and you are free to BUY water or at least make some water-debt