NEWS

• Emalahleni Municipality in Mpumalanga has four water treatment works, none of which meet national quality standards for potable water.
• It also has eight wastewater treatment works, all of which have been failing since 2020 to meet minimum compliance standards.
• Poor households have to use what little money they have from social grants to pay for electricity in order to boil the tap water because it is unsafe.

Water supplied by the municipality is often brown, sometimes even black, in Klarinet township, Emalahleni (previously Witbank), says Lettie Mdluli.

Mdluli (62) lives with her five daughters and eight grandchildren. No one is employed in her family. The entire household survives on child support grants and the little money they get from recycling.

READ: Twenty-year wait for potable water in Hammanskraal continues as residents seek alternatives

They try to boil water before they drink it, but between Eskom blackouts and the price of electricity for the two-plate stove they use, sometimes they just drink what comes out of the tap.

She says:

The water is not good at all. It causes a loose stomach.

“We spend over R300 on electricity alone, because we boil about five litres of water every two days for drinking,” says Poppie Maseko, who lives a block away. “But even then, my husband suffers from stomach pains and diarrhoea.”

Her family survives on two child support grants and a R350-a-month social relief of distress grant.

As an authorised water service provider, Emalahleni Local Municipality is responsible for four water treatment works which are supposed to supply drinking water that meets South African National Standards to approximately 500 000 residents.

READ: Prepaid water system too much for Johannesburg tenants

There are six indicators for the quality of drinking water supplied, the most important of which are “acute microbiological compliance”, “acute chemical compliance”, and “chronic chemical compliance”. The other three are “non-health aesthetic”, “operational compliance”, and “disinfectant compliance”.

Results from water tests taken throughout the distribution system are supposed to be uploaded monthly to the national Department of Water and Sanitation Integrated Regulatory Information System (IRIS), an online site that tracks the quality of drinking water and the quality of effluent released from wastewater treatment plants across the country.

The results are depicted as a percentage of compliance, calculated on a 12-month running average, and are made public.

Data analysed from the IRIS site on June  18showed Emalahleni had 0% compliance on all six indicators. This means that no results were being uploaded, despite it though it is a legal requirement. Questions on this and other matters sent by GroundUp to the Department of Water and Sanitation, which is the regulator, have gone unanswered.

Similarly, earlier data analysed on March 14 showed 0% compliance across all six indicators.

A search on the IRIS site on 15 September showed Emalahleni had an overall acute microbiological compliance of 92%, which is listed as “bad”. For drinking water a minimum 97% compliance is required.

The acute health, chronic health and non-health aesthetic were all in the excellent compliance range, but operational and disinfectant compliance were both listed as “bad”, at 83% and 10% respectively.

101 municipalities fail to provide safe drinking water

Yet Emalahleni is not an outlier. The IRIS site shows it is but one of 101 local and district municipalities (out of 151 municipalities across the country) that are failing to provide clean and safe drinking water to residents, according to the data analysed on June 18. Of these, 35 had 0% compliance across all six indicators.

READ: DA asks police to probe former top Emalahleni municipal officials for pocketing R11.6m in travel allowances

All of them are failing on microbiological compliance, which is the easiest factor to treat, says Professor Anthony Turton, from the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State.

Microbiological compliance relates to the number of faecal coliforms in the water. Turton says faecal coliforms do not survive long outside the gut where they originate, and are easily killed with chlorine.

But untreated sewage is flowing from the wastewater treatment works operated by the municipality, into two dams from which drinking water is extracted.

Waste water

Emalahleni municipality is responsible for eight wastewater treatment works where wastewater from domestic residences, industrial, and health facilities is treated before being released back into rivers and streams. There are three compliance indicators for wastewater: microbiological, chemical, and physical characteristics.

The IRIS site shows all eight of Emalahleni’s wastewater treatment works fail to treat the wastewater to minimum standards, and have been failing since at least 2020. As a result, about 44 million litres of untreated or partially treated sewage are released into the environment every day.

Three of these failing wastewater treatment works release 11.2 million litres of effluent into streams which flow into the Rietspruit and Witbank dams, from which Emalahleni extracts drinking water.

The Rietspruit wastewater treatment works, which has achieved just 31% microbiological compliance over the last 12 months, had three high level failures this year (for ammonia content, microbiological contaminants, and chemical oxygen demand). This plant releases two-million litres of effluent directly into the Rietspruit Dam per day.

According to information on the Emalahleni municipality website, 3.5-million litres of water are extracted from the Rietspruit Dam per day for drinking water treatment.

One of the better-performing wastewater treatment works in Emalahleni is the Riverview works. The 2022 Green Drop Report – a national bi-annual audit of wastewater treatment works by the Department of Water and Sanitation – gave this one an overall score of 42%, although its microbiological compliance was just 21% and and chemical compliance 78% in the July 2020 to June 2021 reporting period.

During a visit to the plant in August, a process controller said neither of the two generators were working, which meant sewage treatment simply ceased during load shedding.

She said the screen, which is the first process where solids are removed from the incoming sewage flow, was not working. Sludge dams were full, and the sewage flow was greater than the plant is designed to handle.

It’s been more than 10 years, and this plant has been dysfunctional from way back. We report these things, but the municipality takes a long time to fix them.

Weeds, broken machinery, and dilapidated buildings are evident within the plant. The building where staff are supposed to attend to administration and take lunch breaks lacks ceiling boards and what furniture there is, is old and broken.

“Even our senior supervisors are very much aware of the conditions here. They come to this plant. But nothing is being done to rectify the situation,” she said.

According to the Auditor General, the municipality was over R3 billion in debt as of June 30 last year.

Questions sent to the Emalahleni mayor’s office, to the municipal manager, and to the media liaison officer were not answered, despite three days being given for a response, and in spite of a follow-up with the municipal manager.

The DWS has consistently failed to respond to queries.

This article was first published by GroundUp. Read the original article here.

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Originally Appeared Here

Weeks before public housing residents endured a week of uncertainty and fear over an arsenic scare at the Jacob Riis Houses on the Lower East Side, trouble lurked within the basement of Building 11.

A pump that was supposed to keep fresh water always flowing into a 20,000 gallon rooftop tank had stopped functioning properly in mid-July, greatly hampering the tenants’ regular supply of fresh water. And NYCHA staff didn’t have a clue.

For two weeks before NYCHA realized what was going on and during the two additional weeks it took to fix it, the number of resident complaints to NYCHA’s command center about cloudy water in Building 11 grew from a trickle to a flood.

Tenants spoke of milky water spilling from kitchen taps. Some claimed the water smelled like paint. From mid-July to mid-August, when the pump was finally replaced, NYCHA fielded more than 80 complaints from that one building.

This maintenance failure has now emerged as potentially a key explanation for the debacle that followed.

Responding to the wave of complaints, NYCHA management began a series of tests to figure out what was tainting the tap water. That frantic effort ultimately led to the 2,600 tenants of Riis Houses living for eight days fearing the water they’d been drinking for years.

First, late on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, NYCHA and Mayor Eric Adams announced that tests had detected arsenic in the water — only after THE CITY asked questions about it. That night they advised residents to stop drinking and cooking with the water until the system could be flushed out and retested, and Adams himself showed up to hand out bottled water.

Eight days later on Sept. 9, NYCHA and the mayor suddenly reversed course, announcing that the tests were actually flawed and that there was no contaminant to fear. Soon after they lifted the water ban and claimed that all was good to go. Tenants nonetheless still struggled with uncertainty and fear.

The saga is now the subject of multiple investigations, including one by the federal monitor who oversees NYCHA in partnership with the city Department of Investigation (DOI). Two City Council committees have also launched probes, and Adams has promised a top-down inquiry.

On Friday, the Council committees are scheduled to kick things off. For the first time, NYCHA and City Hall officials will be placed under oath to give sworn testimony. The joint hearing is being convened by Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), chair of the Oversight and Investigations Committee, and Alexa Aviles (D-Brooklyn), who heads the public housing committee.

Last week, Brewer and Aviles demanded that NYCHA hand over a trove of documents, including emails and internal communications related to the water testing at Riis. That included the total number of water quality complaints at Riis from May 1 through last week, along with water issue complaints at all NYCHA developments from 2017 through last week.

Councilmember Alexa Aviles speaks in the City Hall chambers about NYCHA contracts.

As of Thursday, they’d received much of what they’d requested, including what Aviles aide James Neimesiter described as “a timeline of complaints received and logged in” to NYCHA’s internal system, as well as all test results conducted by city agencies and vendors at Riis.

One key question remains unanswered: What happened in the weeks leading up to the arsenic scare at Riis?

Busted Pump

Investigators are zeroing in on the month from when the water pump at Building 11 went out to when it was finally fixed as the number of water quality complaints suddenly and exponentially jumped, two sources familiar with the ongoing probes have told THE CITY.

Two pumps serve Building 11 — one of which stopped functioning around July 15 or perhaps even earlier, the sources said. NYCHA staff did not discover the busted pump until July 29 and then did not get it fixed until Aug 15, the sources assert. 

Meanwhile the number of complaints rose, with around 30 through the beginning of July and another 51 through the date the pump was replaced.

NYCHA informed elected officials about the pump issue early this week, including Assemblymember Harvey Epstein, whose Lower Manhattan district includes Riis and several other NYCHA developments. On Thursday, Epstein told THE CITY he hopes the Council hearing Friday will begin to shed light on what happened in Building 11.

“The value of the hearing is to explore what happened, how [the pump] broke and what NYCHA did in response,” he said.

NYCHA management did not respond to a list of written questions from THE CITY about the pump on Thursday, nor would they discuss the protocols for inspecting and cleaning the 220 water tanks that serve developments across NYCHA’s portfolio.

The tank in question was last inspected Nov. 22, 2021, and passed, according to what NYCHA told the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which requires all landlords to self-report this information.

In June, NYCHA staff performed an annual cleanup on the tank, draining out all the water, scrubbing down the insides, and then refilling it, the sources said. A measured portion of chlorine was then mixed in to sanitize the tank.

NYCHA management declined to say if personnel checked the condition of the water pump during the annual cleaning, or explain why it took so long to discover the problem and then fix it.

Sandy’s Legacy

There’s another potential contributor to water quality problems: plumbing and other systems at Riis are still getting upgrades as part of the decade-long response to superstorm Sandy.

Sandy did serious damage to Riis and several other NYCHA properties that hug the FDR Drive along the East River. More than $3 billion in federal funds was allocated to NYCHA to upgrade damaged developments citywide and make them flood-resistant should another deluge occur.

Almost 10 years after the storm slammed New York City on Oct. 29, 2012, the resiliency upgrade is still underway at Riis.

On July 22, for example, the city Department of Buildings (DOB) approved a plumbing permit for the “proposed incorporation of emergency power generators” in Building 11. The permit describes the work involved as “renovation of building systems damaged by Hurricane Sandy, replacement of damaged equipment in the same location with similar in kind equipment.”

Late on Wednesday, city building inspectors discovered yet another issue: problems with the foundation of another Riis address, 178 Avenue D, known as Building 3.

DOB issued an emergency order requiring that NYCHA immediately perform “work to stabilize the support columns in crawl space” of that building.

The inspectors apparently felt the building was safe enough not to issue a vacate order, but neither DOB nor NYCHA would discuss the situation when queried by THE CITY Thursday.

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Originally Appeared Here

Roya Alkafaji, Manager, Healthy Communities and Lindsay McCormick, Senior Manager, Safer Chemicals

Denver Water has one of the most successful lead service line (LSL) replacement programs in the country. Since it began the program in 2020, the utility has replaced nearly 14,000 LSLs—prioritizing lines to buildings serving vulnerable populations, such as child-care facilities. Denver Water has also distributed over 102,000 filters to local residents. EPA should continue to support their innovative approach.

Watch this video to learn more about Denver Water’s Lead Reduction Program.

In 2019, we blogged about a novel program that Denver Water designed to address the estimated 64,000 to 84,000 LSLs in its system. These lead pipes connect buildings to water mains under the street.  At the time, the water utility proposed to fully replace all LSLs in their entirety within 15 years under its Lead Reduction Program.

The utility decided to fund the work through water rates and bonds, hydropower production, and other sources. In addition, they proposed to provide filters to residents until six months after replacement of the LSL.

Critically, the program includes a comprehensive effort to engage local partners to reach all members of the community. For example, Denver Water partnered with CREA Results, a local community-based organization that is helping to engage and educate Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities on the risks of lead in drinking water and to ensure that residents understand the steps involved with LSL replacement in their neighborhoods. Denver Water’s program has emerged as a national model and its success is recognized by the Lead Service Line Replacement Collaborative and EPA (including its recent service line inventory guidance).

When the program was initially proposed in 2019, EPA Region 8 approved it for a three-year period to allow Denver Water time to demonstrate that its approach to LSL replacement would be successful. EPA permission was required because the utility sought to vary from the requirements of the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) by fully replacing LSLs over 15 years instead of using orthophosphates to control corrosion and reduce leaching of lead from the pipes into the water. Wastewater utilities in the region were concerned that using orthophosphate would aggravate persistent algae blooms in the South Platte River, south of Denver.

Instead, Denver Water’s program uses a multipronged strategy of maintaining a public online service line inventory, proactively replacing LSLs, and increasing pH corrosion control treatment, as well as providing filters to residents.

Now, Denver Water has asked EPA for permission to extend its replacement program for the full 15 years. The Denver Water team has exceeded its 7% replacement rate goal each year, ensured that public health is protected through the filter program, and centered environmental justice by prioritizing underserved communities.

How You Can Help

EPA gave preliminary approval on September 1, 2022 on the grounds that the program provides “at least as efficient lead reductions as compared to compliance with the [LCR revision] provisions regarding optimal corrosion control treatment.” Before the new proposed variance is finalized, EPA is seeking input from the public on this decision.

EDF fully supports the continuation of Denver Water’s Lead Reduction Program. If you’d like to lend your support, EPA Region 8 is holding a public comment period where you can submit written comments. If you’re local to Denver, consider attending one of two virtual public meetings on October 5 and October 6, 2022. The public comment period ends on October 7, 2022.

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Originally Appeared Here

Raleigh

Sep 22, 2022

The Division of Water Infrastructure’s application deadline for the Fall 2022 round of drinking water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure project funding is Sept. 30, 2022, no later than 5:00 p.m.

All applications must be completely submitted and received via the Division’s online submittal portal by 5:00 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2022.

Division staff recommend that applicants upload their applications as early as possible to ensure their application will be submitted before the deadline.

To learn more about the Division of Water Infrastructure, visit: https://deq.nc.gov/about/divisions/water-infrastructure

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Originally Appeared Here

Nearly three years ago, state officials found toxic “forever chemicals” polluting the drinking water in the city of South Shore at higher concentrations than anywhere else in Kentucky.  

The state’s Energy and Environment Cabinet warned South Shore Mayor Cheryl Moore and began regularly testing the city’s water and sending her the results.  

Life has otherwise gone on much as usual in the small city of about a thousand people, which skirts the banks of the Ohio River northwest of Ashland. Hungry motorists pull off the main highway and walk up to the window at EJ’s Dairy Bar for hot dogs, hamburgers, sodas and slushies.

The ice and water for the soda fountain come from the city’s tap, but no one from the city or state ever stopped by to warn the business about the contaminated drinking water, according to EJ’s manager Eric Feeman, whose parents own the restaurant. 

“I honestly have not heard a thing about it; this is the first thing that has been brought up at all,” Feeman told a WFPL News reporter in late August. “I think it would have been a good idea to do that. I think they probably should have been transparent with the people.” 

Feeman wasn’t the only one left in the dark.

An entrance sign on the way into South Shore, Kentucky, claims the city as the “Gateway to the Country Music Highway.”

An investigation from WFPL News and The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting found evidence South Shore officials failed to tell residents about the pollution in their drinking water, omitting key details in an emergency water declaration. The city did not have any records of public notices sent to residents. City officials did not answer questions or return emails and phone calls answering whether they had ever informed residents. 

The mayor and a city commissioner hung up on a reporter when contacted. And in interviews with more than a dozen residents, none had heard of the contamination. 

The questions raised about transparency aren’t unique to South Shore. In the western Kentucky community of Henderson, state and local officials didn’t inform the public about widespread pollution from a Teflon recycler until WFPL News and APM Reports broke a series of stories last year. 

The problems in South Shore highlight how — even when the potential harm caused by these chemicals is well-understood and the pollution is well-documented — public officials had no legal responsibility to inform their constituents about the forever chemicals in their drinking water. As a result, residents didn’t have the information they needed to make informed decisions about contaminated drinking water in their community years after the pollution was discovered.

Forever chemicals, also known as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, describe a family of thousands of compounds used in everyday products: food wrappers, non-stick pans, firefighting foam, carpeting, clothing and cosmetics. They’ve received the moniker “forever chemicals” because their bonds are among the strongest in nature and persist in the environment for a very long time.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says exposure increases the risk of various cancers and organ damage. Exposure can also suppress the immune system and interfere with the body’s natural hormones. A 2012 medical study of nearly 70,000 people in Parkersburg, West Virginia, found exposure to one PFAS chemical likely contributed to birth defects, cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid, liver and kidney disease and high cholesterol.

A view of the Ohio River near the city-owned water treatment plant in South Shore, Kentucky.

The EPA issues health advisories that calculate the level of PFAS exposure people can have in their drinking water over their lifetime before suffering adverse health effects. The agency encourages communities and water systems with contamination levels higher than that to inform users and to consider ways to lower PFAS levels by treating their water or finding new uncontaminated water sources. 

But the advisories are not legally enforceable. No state or federal laws regulate the chemicals in Kentucky. Communities and utilities are not required to do anything about the forever chemicals in their drinking water, and there are no clear consequences for failing to inform residents about PFAS.

When Moore, who is currently running for reelection, declared a water emergency in January, the measure she signed did not mention PFAS contamination. The declaration said the city’s wells had “diminished” so much that the city’s water source was “not sufficient,” giving the impression the city’s wells were running dry without providing any reason why.

But in June, Moore authorized the city to sue chemical manufacturers for producing the forever chemicals contaminating the city’s water. The complaint, filed in federal court, claims South Shore shut down the wells because of the chemicals in the drinking water, a detail that Moore omitted from her emergency declaration in January.

The declaration also authorized an emergency drinking water line to be built across a bridge over the Ohio River so that South Shore could receive water from the neighboring city of Portsmouth, Ohio. But Portsmouth discovered low levels of PFAS chemicals in its own drinking water in 2020 and has also filed a lawsuit against PFAS manufacturers.

Construction on the temporary water line finished in late June. Still, as of July, records show PFAS continued contaminating South Shore’s drinking water at levels deemed unsafe by the EPA. 

Energy and Environment Cabinet spokesperson John Mura said PFAS concentrations in South Shore’s drinking water are now lower, and similar to those found in other communities that draw water from the Ohio River.

But records show that many of those communities also have drinking water with PFAS levels higher than EPA health standards.

Jamie Young, an associate professor at the University of Louisville’s Center for Integrated Environmental Health Sciences, said PFAS chemicals pose a risk to residents, and they deserve to know. Providing residents information about the risks could help them reduce their exposure, she said.

“There’s definitely a health risk,” said Young, who researches the toll pollution can have on communities. “Until we understand more and understand how to mediate this, give your customers the opportunity to make that decision for themselves.”

Drinking the water in South Shore

South Shore’s water serves nearly 6,800 people in the city and surrounding communities, including 14 churches, three schools, two hospital outreach centers, a library and dozens of small businesses, records show.

Most South Shore residents interviewed for this story said they don’t drink the water, which comes from a city-owned utility. Decades of foul smells, discoloration, boil water notices and problems ranging from high chlorine to repeated E. Coli violations had sown distrust even before the mayor declared the water emergency.

But some do drink and cook with the water, like Marissa Smith, who’s been living just a few doors down from the mayor in South Shore for the last year and a half. Smith wanted to know why no one told her about the contaminated water.

“I definitely would have been buying bottled water or a filter to correct the water if I knew it could possibly cause long-term issues,” she said.

The city of South Shore, Kentucky.

Since 2019, the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection has been sampling water in South Shore, and the levels of PFAS chemicals were considered safe under the EPA’s federal lifetime health advisory standards, which was 70 parts per trillion for combined levels of the most -researched PFAS chemicals: PFOA and PFOS.

But the EPA significantly revised those numbers in June, dramatically lowering the standard to just .004 parts per trillion for PFOA and .02 for PFOS, “to help protect concerned families from this pervasive challenge,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said.

Based on the new standards, records show PFAS levels in South Shore’s drinking water at times exceeded several thousand times the EPA’s lifetime limit advisory for PFOA and PFOS. At least a half-dozen different compounds were found.

In July, even after the city established a temporary water line from the neighboring town of Portsmouth, results still showed PFAS chemicals exceeding federal health standards, records show.

It’s unclear how long PFAS chemicals have contaminated the drinking water in South Shore and what the consequences of that exposure means for the people who live there.

Business owner Sarah Williamson runs a discount store in South Shore, Kentucky.

Still, South Shore residents interviewed by WFPL said they would have liked to have known there were unsafe chemicals in their water. Some heard the wells were running dry, and others knew about the new emergency line, but none had been warned about the PFAS chemicals.

“Obviously, people need to be informed,” said Sarah Williamson, who runs a discount shop in town.

One of Williamson’s customers, Genny Gordan, said she wasn’t sure why the city had built an emergency line from Portsmouth to South Shore. She remembers the city’s water having problems over the years. But she doesn’t remember receiving any notice about the PFAS contamination.

“I don’t know if [the mayor] has to anyone else, but it’s never been mentioned to me,” Gordan said.

When WFPL asked South Shore officials for any public notice informing residents about PFAS contamination since 2019, the city responded with an email saying that it could not produce any such records.

The state environment cabinet first publicly shared information about the contamination in a 2019 report. Mura, the cabinet’s spokesperson, said he sent a press release to more than 100 outlets, including WFPL, which covered the story. Nonetheless, South Shore residents interviewed for this story were unaware of the study.

In August 2020, a state environmental scientist recommended South Shore consider buying water rather than continuing to rely on contaminated wells, records show.

At the time, the city had a $3 million loan from the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority to build a new water treatment plant to fix the its more established water quality issues.

The PFAS contamination was so severe, however, that the Energy and Environment Cabinet would not support the construction of a new water treatment plant.

A campaign sign to re-elect South Shore Mayor Cheryl Moore.

Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Goodman wrote to the KIA in November 2021, saying it would be too expensive for South Shore to treat the water for the contamination and the city “must pursue an alternate water source.”

Mayor Moore wrote her own letter to the agency that month asking to change the loan terms so South Shore could use the funds to build an emergency water line to Portsmouth. She told KIA that PFAS chemicals had been found in most of the city’s wells and that they “are not producing enough water.” The agency granted her request.

WFPL asked the Kentucky’s Energy and Environment Cabinet if it had information the wells were running dry. Mura replied that South Shore took several of its higher yield wells offline because of PFAS sampling at the cabinet’s recommendation.

“This left the town dependent on lower-producing wells until the community received water from Portsmouth,” Mura said.

PFAS contamination lawsuits across the U.S.

From 1951 to 2003, an industry risk assessor estimated DuPont released more than 600,000 pounds of PFOA into the Ohio River outside Parkersburg, West Virginia — a little more than 100 miles north of South Shore. 

As recently as this summer, researchers continued to find PFOA and other kinds of PFAS chemicals throughout the Ohio River, in every major Kentucky watershed and at unsafe levels in at least 38 drinking water systems. 

These chemicals aren’t the kind of thing that can be simply boiled out of water. Utilities and residents can treat drinking water for PFAS chemicals using activated carbon and reverse osmosis, but the process is expensive.

Many cities across the country are suing PFAS manufacturers to cover the costs of remediation. Bloomberg Law reports more than 6,400 PFAS-related lawsuits have been filed since 2005.

The pollution generated at the DuPont Washington Works plant outside Parkersburg resulted in a 2004 class-action lawsuit settlement valued at over $300 million and the creation of a medical monitoring program that found links between one specific type of PFAS, known as PFOA, and a half-dozen diseases, including cancer, pregnancy-induced hypertension and ulcerative colitis, records show. 

Attorney Rob Bilott exposed the world to the environmental pollution from PFAS chemicals and has secured more than $1 billion for PFAS-impacted communities.

The attorney who won that settlement, Rob Bilott, said these chemicals pose a worldwide public health threat. Bilott, who is a Kentucky resident, has since secured more than $1 billion for PFAS-impacted communities and is now co-counsel on the South Shore lawsuit.

“What began along the Ohio River two decades ago focused on one chemical, PFOA, that DuPont was using, we now know has spread to a whole family of these chemicals being found in water all over the country,” Bilott said during a virtual conference call on the EPA’s proposal to designate PFAS as a hazardous substance.

Bilott said he’s tried to alert Kentucky officials to the problems surrounding PFAS, but has had “limited success.”

Democratic state Rep. Nima Kulkarni of Louisville has introduced multiple bills to the Kentucky General Assembly in the past two years that proposed the Energy and Environment Cabinet establish maximum PFAS limits for drinking water and industrial discharges. But the bills weren’t assigned to a committee and failed.

“PFAS is not something that’s going to be high up on anyone’s priority list simply because legislators are not aware of what it is or how it’s impacting their own communities and until we get to that point it’s not likely to get a hearing,” Kulkarni said. 

While there are no state or federal rules regulating PFAS chemicals, the EPA has established a roadmap for managing PFAS pollution and plans on proposing drinking water regulations this fall.

In June, the city of South Shore established a temporary water line across the U.S. Grant Bridge from the neighboring city of Portsmouth, Ohio.

Beginning in 2023, public water systems across the country will begin regularly testing for 29 PFAS chemicals under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The act also directs water systems to notify customers of the PFAS levels in their water.

The EPA is currently considering treating two of the most widely used PFAS chemicals — both of which were found in South Shore’s drinking water — under the same rules covering hazardous waste.

The agency has also invited states and territories to apply for grants to address PFAS chemicals in drinking water, specifically in small and disadvantaged communities.

But Bilott said the regulatory process has dragged on for decades while allowing the pollution to continue.

“Up to now, really, what communities have been forced to do is go into courts,” he said. “And to try to hold folks responsible for this and to try to get clean water, to try to get medical testing, to try to get compensated for the diseases that have been caused.” 

Bilott said he’s hopeful the increased attention on forever chemicals will encourage the EPA to swiftly adopt new regulations. But until then, he said, communities have to fend for themselves.

“We still have a system where the burden is placed on the exposed people to have to prove that these things are causing these harms,” Bilott said. 

Who’s to blame?

In August, the city of South Shore sued 3M — the only manufacturer of PFOS in the U.S. —  DuPont and its subsidiaries in the U.S. District Court of South Carolina for the pollution in South Shore’s drinking water.

South Shore’s lawsuit joins around 500 similar cases from local governments suing PFAS manufacturers for contaminating groundwater. Generally, they allege the contamination came from PFAS chemicals used in firefighting foam.

A judicial panel in South Carolina decided to centralize all cases potentially involving firefighting foam contamination because they involved common “questions of law.”

The complaint states the chemical manufacturers designed, manufactured, marketed and sold chemicals they knew were toxic and would be released into the environment. South Shore is seeking to recover the costs associated with removing PFAS pollution, including investigating, treating, filtering and monitoring the city’s water supply, which it pulls from shallow aquifers beside the Ohio River.

New York-based attorney Kevin J. Madonna is also representing South Shore’s case in federal court. He wrote in an email that 3M and DuPont can be held liable for manufacturing a product they knew was toxic and could contaminate drinking water supplies. His law firm, Kennedy & Madonna, represents approximately 90 public entities in PFAS pollution cases across the country.

“We have successfully utilized these legal theories in numerous cases over the past two decades, collecting billions of dollars in damages for our clients,” Madonna wrote. 

3M spokesperson Grant Thompson wrote in an emailed statement that the company acted responsibly in manufacturing and selling PFAS products and “will vigorously defend its record of environmental stewardship.”

A spokesperson for DuPont de Nemours, a spinoff of the original company named as a defendant, challenged the suit’s merit, claiming it was “the latest example of DuPont de Nemours being improperly named in litigation” and that the company has never manufactured PFOA or PFOS.

Several South Shore residents interviewed for this story said they hadn’t heard about the city filing the suit, including Smith, who said she used to drink the water before a reporter told her about the town’s issues.

Now, Smith has more questions than answers: Why hasn’t the government regulated a chemical known to be dangerous? Why didn’t the state, city or its water utility officials warn customers like her in the nearly three years they had data on the pollution? And how will South Shore residents benefit directly if the city wins the lawsuit?

“I’ve been paying for this water,” she said. “It’s not OK to say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ If we weren’t informed, who is at blame?”

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Wildfires in Wyoming and across the West are creating bigger impacts on snowpack supplying farms, energy production and drinking water for millions of downstream users, according to a new study.

Steven Fassnacht, professor of snow hydrology at Colorado State University and the report’s co-author, said the 2020 Mullen Fire in southern Wyoming and Cameron Peak Fire in Colorado were both very large fires destroying forests in places which have historically not seen fires spark or spread.

“They were burning at this high elevation where the snowpack is deep,” Fassnacht observed. “They burned up there not because of a lack of snow; they burned because of a lack of rain in the summer.”

Researchers found snow in wildfire-burned locations is now melting roughly three weeks earlier than normal, and Fassnacht explained as climate change expands fire zones into more snow areas, water managers and others may need to make adjustments. Increasing storage capacity can help capture melting snowpack, and managers can also re-time water releases from reservoirs to be in sync with time-sensitive users including farms.

Instead of less-than-precise tools such as snow courses and SNOWTEL stations to estimate annual water supplies, Fassnacht urged managers to tap technologies including LIDAR, which works like radar using light instead of radio waves to measure snowpack, and new modeling, which can better calculate actual water volumes.

“We need to use multiple tools from our toolbox to better manage the water,” Fassnacht emphasized. “One is the storage, and two is the information of how much is there, and how much is actually coming into the system?”

After the Cameron Peak fire, the city of Fort Collins was forced to cut off water coming down the mountain because it was filled with ash and soot. Wildfires also can increase landslides in watersheds, which Fassnacht pointed out can harm fish habitat and water quality for downstream users.

“Especially municipalities, especially for residential water use downstream of any of these fires,” Fassnacht asserted. “The ash is very difficult to treat in water treatment plants.”

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A new film is documenting efforts to prevent invasive carp species from entering the Great Lakes.

“Against the Current 2: Keeping Invasive Carp Out of the Great Lakes” is a sequel to 2020’s “Against the Current,” which detailed work on the Brandon Road Lock and Dam project near Chicago.

Marc Smith, policy director for the National Wildlife Federation, said although the effort has been centered on Illinois and Lake Michigan, it has wide-reaching implications. He cautioned any of the Great Lakes could be vulnerable to invasive species of any kind, not just carp.

Smith described how carp could affect waterways such as Lake Erie.

“Carp would eat a lot of the forage food that a lot of the prey fish rely upon,” Smith explained. “In some instances, perch can be impacted and that not only means for the fishery. But, the fishery has multiple impacts on the economy of Lake Erie and the quality of life.”

Smith noted lawmakers in Congress have been coming together across the political divide to support the project. Congress will be funding 80% of the work at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam, while the state of Illinois is backing the project as well. He is grateful to see people taking the issue seriously and realizing how invasive species could pose a detriment to the numerous industries of the Great Lakes.

While the Brandon Road Lock and Dam project is a short-term project, it will have long-term effects on keeping invasive carp at bay. Prior to the Brandon Road project, Smith acknowledged some projects were contentious.

“A lot of the solutions and proposals to keep carp out of the Great Lakes were met with serious challenges,” Smith recounted. “Not only just financial, but how much it would cost to, essentially, fill in and block the transfer of water so that you would stop carp from getting into Lake Michigan through the Chicago Sanitary and Wastewater Canal.”

Given how many states border the Great Lakes, Smith knows invasive carp could pose a serious risk to the environments of the surrounding states as well as neighboring Canada. As technologies for keeping invasive species out of the Great Lakes have developed through time, Smith emphasized education must continue, so people understand why the Great Lakes are the wrong ecosystem for invasive carp.

Disclosure: National Wildlife Federation contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, Endangered Species & Wildlife, Energy Policy, Water. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.

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Pollution is a major problem for wastewater facilities in Idaho.

The Idaho Conservation League’s fifth annual report on discharges from sewage treatment plants finds three-quarters violated Clean Water Act standards between 2019 and 2021.

However, those violations aren’t equally distributed: just 10 facilities were responsible for more than half of them.

Will Tiedemann, conservation associate for the Idaho Conservation League, said the facilities are in rural towns, which have the fewest resources.

“There’s less money, there’s less support and funds to be able to adequately maintain and equip these treatment plants to do the work they need to do,” Tiedemann explained. “That can be a big challenge.”

Pollutants such as ammonia and E. coli were the most common. Tiedemann pointed out the violations pose a potential threat to human and wildlife health. Despite the large number of infractions, the report mentioned there were 28 cities and towns with no violations, and seven improved over the three-year period.

Tiedemann noted Idaho has received funds from coronavirus aid passed by Congress, which could help towns facing issues with their wastewater treatment plants. However, some rural communities could be pushed to the bottom of the list because of their small population size.

Tiedemann emphasized members of small communities could also have greater influence on their leaders.

“Maybe the converse point of being a small town is that every citizen’s voice matters just that much more when they are these smaller towns,” Tiedemann remarked. “Speaking to your local officials – speaking to your mayors, any kind of city boards, county commissioners, things like that – maybe can have a bigger effect.”

He added the report comes at an interesting time, as Idaho takes over Clean Water Act enforcement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He stressed the public has an opportunity to help the state develop what compliance with the act will look like.

Disclosure: The Idaho Conservation League contributes to our fund for reporting on Energy Policy, Environment, Public Lands/Wilderness, and Water. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.

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As climate change brings longer and more severe drought to the American Southwest, a community-led coalition is celebrating new protections for more than 520 miles of 25 Colorado streams.

Duncan Rose, conservation co-chair for Dolores River Anglers, said if pristine Colorado streams are polluted or degraded, the results would be disastrous for native trout species which need clean water to survive, and also for entire communities and industries.

“Obviously, everybody suffers,” Rose asserted. “Whether it’s from drinking, whether it’s from agricultural, whether it’s recreational use. But also all of the web of life that’s associated with the stream, of which trout are simply a canary in the mine, so to speak.”

The Colorado Water Quality Control Commission recently finalized the state’s designation of the streams in southwestern Colorado as Outstanding Waters under the Clean Water Act. The designation protects existing high-quality waters from future degradation including pollution from development, mining, oil and gas, and other uses.

Rose noted the move is also a win for local businesses because it reinforces the need for water managers to protect resources critical for the outdoor recreation industry, the region’s fastest-growing economic driver.

“Whether it’s hunting or biking or trail running, backpacking, camping,” Rose outlined. “It’s imperative that we keep this quality foremost in the minds of the people who manage this.”

The protected streams largely run through public lands, and Rose pointed out the designation does not prohibit multiple uses, such as mining. But he added any operator triggering damage to a stream’s water quality would now be obligated to keep those waters clean.

“If mining were to occur, there would have to be best-practice engineering protection designs put in place that would prevent any degradation to the water quality of that stream,” Rose explained.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

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One might think water is water, but that is not always the case. True water snobs pride themselves on being able to pick out a “Dasani” water from a “Voss.” The Office of Sustainability’s favorite brand of water, however, is the one with the least waste, so they decided to put drinking water to the test.

From noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, representatives from the Office of Sustainability sat beneath Alumni Gateway with two water dispensers, one red and one blue. Each was full of still-cold water, anonymously representing two water types: tap and bottled. Passersby could stop and refresh on the hot day with a dixie cup of each and a task to guess which was bottled. 

Izzy Stitchick, a junior studying environmental sciences and the social media and marketing coordinator for the Office of Sustainability, said the challenge will hopefully encourage students to stop purchasing bottled water in favor of more sustainable options.

“We are testing to see if people can tell the difference,” Stitchick said. “And usually there’s not really a consensus, people can’t tell the difference and that is to kind of highlight how there’s really no point in buying bottled water when it kind of just all tastes the same.”

According to Statista, a 2019 study found Americans tend to drink tap water for taste, quality and safety. However, Kate Harmon, a junior studying environmental sciences and events coordinator for the Office of Sustainability, said with water regulations, people need not be concerned regarding the safety of their water.

“You don’t need to buy plastic water bottles since it creates a lot of plastic waste, and tap water is more regulated,” Harmon said. “In reality tap water tastes the same if not better, and it’s more regulated by the government so it’s actually safer.”

According to the Ohio Department of Health, drinking water must be tested for basic contaminants like E. coli and nitrates in order to be approved under a private water system permit. Ohio also follows national regulations for drinking water, including required water-testing schedules and methods.

The City of Athens gets most of its tap water from ground water and an intricate well water system that has been around since 1894. In its 2020 Drinking Water Report, the City of Athens said Athens’ water is at higher risk for contamination, so in 2017 Athens adopted a stormwater management program to better protect drinking water from contaminates by educating the public, controlling stormwater runoff and monitoring possible interferences with the clean water system. 

As for taste concerns regarding the differing waters, Stitchick said most people who participated did not notice a difference between the two water samples, but those who did referred to the bottled water as “plasticky.” According to Stitchick, the challenge results found 74% of participants preferred tap water to bottled. 

Wednesday’s water challenge was part of a larger concept, 2022’s Pollution Prevention Week. Hosted by the Office of Sustainability, the week of Sept. 19 through 25 hosts a plethora of sustainable events and information, including a Court Street litter pick-up Monday and a pollution prevention information table Tuesday.

“I feel like it’s really important to encourage the reduction of litter and plastic waste here, since our campus is just a little area of Athens, so everybody’s affected by everything that happens,” Alissa Feldman, a freshman studying environmental science and sustainability, said. “It’s important to keep our community safe and clean.”

Harmon encouraged students to follow the Office of Sustainability on Instagram for more information about upcoming events and tips on how to live more sustainably. 

“I also think climate change is a very overwhelming issue,” Stitchick said. “It’s easy to become hopeless, but realizing that our individual actions and our individual choices do have a tiny little impact I think brings hope and meaning to people, and collectively we can make a big difference.”

@katie_millard11

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