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Articles Posted in Groundwater contamination

The greatest enduring threat to the residents of East Palestine is contaminated groundwater. Fast remediation — and not empty political assurances — can solve the problem. 

Aerial_view_Norfolk_Southern_freight_train_derailment_Feb_2023The director of Ohio’s Department of Health sought to assure East Palestine residents of their safety by remarking that the cancer-causing solvents from the derailment now in the town are no cause for concern, because these chemicals are already “a part of our everyday life.”

What a terribly callous, ignorant, thing for a health official to say. Just because there were some carcinogens in East Palestine before the train derailment does not excuse Norfolk Southern  dumping tens of thousands of pounds more of them onto the small town.  Plus—and the director should know this—where it comes to carcinogens, there is no such thing as a safe level.  That means that every bit dumped by Norfolk adds to the town’s danger.

Wichita-300x218I’ve been an environmental lawyer for more than 20 years, working for communities whose homes, air, and water have been polluted by industry’s careless disposal of dangerous chemicals.  I’ve seen government respond aggressively to protect its citizens under these circumstances, but more often not so aggressively.  I’ve even seen government pretend that the contamination is not as bad as it really is to justify not doing anything about it.

But I’ve never seen a state government so matter-of-factly abandon its citizens in need of protection as the State of Kansas did to the residents of more than 1,000 homes in the Historically Black neighborhoods that are located Northeast of downtown Wichita, including the Wichita Independent, Northeast Millair, and Northeast Highgate neighborhoods.

Kansas should be ashamed of itself.  It must immediately reverse course and do its duty to protect its citizens against dangerous chemical contamination.

carbonated-water-300x200As environmental lawyers, one of our passions is fighting for clean drinking water for communities affected by contamination. So, it is disappointing that the EPA, under President Biden, has endorsed a Trump administration decision and decided not to regulate perchlorate in drinking water.

What is Perchlorate?

Perchlorate is a contaminant that can be found in groundwater, surface water, and soil. Most perchlorate manufactured in the U.S. is used for rockets and missiles. Perchlorate-based chemicals are also used in safety flares, fireworks, matches, pyrotechnics, explosives, and batteries. Because perchlorates are used in military applications, some countries prefer to keep the amounts they make confidential. So, we do not know the exact amount of perchlorates produced or used in the United States. However, high levels of perchlorates are often found near military bases where the chemicals have been used in rocket fuel. And to no one’s surprise, the Department of Defense and other military contractors oppose limiting perchlorate in drinking water.

Camp-LejeuneUpdate, July 2022: The House and Senate recently passed the Honoring Our PACT Act, which will allow veterans and their families to recover damages for illnesses caused by toxic water at Camp Lejeune by filing an FTCA claim, and if that claim is denied, by filing a toxic tort lawsuit in North Carolina. The Bill was expected to go to President Biden’s desk for his signature, but it is currently being blocked in the Senate by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.

A United States Marine Corps base in Onslow County, North Carolina was the site of “the worst example of water contamination this country has ever seen.” Camp Lejeune is the second largest Marine base in the United States. Marines and their families lived on base for short periods of time learning necessary skills, since it was an amphibious training base. Then, they would leave to be stationed elsewhere. Little did they know that they were being exposed to toxic water in their temporary homes.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, people living or working at Camp Lejeune were exposed to contaminated drinking water from multiple sites on base. For instance, prior to 1986, water coming from two treatment plants—Tarawa Terrace and Hadnot Point—contained volatile organic compounds. The contamination primarily included perchloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), dichloroethylene (DCE), vinyl chloride, and benzene. Throughout the base, the drinking water contained toxic chemicals at levels 240 to 3,400 times higher than what safety standards permit.

water-1154080_1920-1024x680In the United States, more than 13 million households rely on private wells to get their drinking water. But unlike municipal sources of drinking water, like a town or city, private wells are not regulated by the government. Instead, private well owners are responsible for the safety of their own drinking water.

To make sure that private well water is free from contaminants, wells should be tested at least once a year. Yet, routine water tests for private wells are uncommon in Illinois and in other places across the country. Without these tests, however, families have no way of knowing whether their private well water is safe to drink.

Testing your well water is important because it’s the only way to determine whether it contains chemicals or other contaminants that may be harmful to your health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns that the following contaminants are commonly found in private well water:

coal-ash-photo-300x188Among news of federal regulations being scaled back and reports of the drastic climate change situation, it’s nice to hear about a state taking action to protect the environment. This summer, Illinois did just that. Governor Pritzker signed the Coal Ash Pollution Prevention Act, which protects Illinois residents and the environment from the dangerous effects of toxic coal ash.

So, what’s coal ash and why is it dangerous? Coal ash, also called “coal combustion residuals,” is the group of byproducts produced from burning coal. The byproducts include waste from each process in the coal plant, like “bottom ash” sitting at the bottom of the coal furnace and “fly ash” that’s captured going out the smokestacks. Coal ash is one of the largest types of industrial wastes in the United States. Nearly 130 million tons of coal ash was generated in 2014. About one-third of coal ash is recycled, but the majority is either dumped into landfills at the power plants or mixed with water and put in “ponds” behind earthen walls.

Coal ash can be incredibly dangerous to humans and the environment. Depending on where the coal was mined, coal ash can contain heavy metals, such as arsenic and lead. If you eat, drink, or inhale them, heavy metals can cause cancer and nervous system malfunctions, such as developmental delays. They have also been linked to kidney disease, reproductive problems, heart damage, lung disease, birth defects, and impaired bone growth. When coal ash is improperly disposed of, in coal ash ponds that lack protective liners, for example, it can leach into the water, carrying toxic substances into drinking water supplies. Over 100 communities nationwide have been impacted by coal ash leaching. Some impacted communities in Illinois include Waukegan and Peoria.

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for water-2296444_1920.jpgTens of thousands of Americans will learn this year that the water just underneath their home-their groundwater-is contaminated with chemicals that some nearby factory dumped probably decades ago, and left to bleed down through the soil, infiltrate the groundwater, and ultimately migrate into your neighborhood.

I’ve been representing families in exactly this predicament for nearly 18 years. This is what I’ve learned they should be doing/asking in response to this news:

(1) Talk to an experienced environmental lawyer about your legal rights and options. Contaminated groundwater, and what to do about it, involves some complicated legal, scientific, and sometimes political issues. Also, while you are going to need access to accurate information, and quickly, in order to make good decisions to protect your family, those most likely to have the information-the polluter and sometimes government-may not want to give it to you. A lawyer can help you get it.

I’ve been working for nearly 18 years helping families in American neighborhoods use our court system to force the companies that polluted their water to clean it up. Despite all the anguish that having contaminated water initially caused these families, and despite the truly reprehensible behavior of some of the polluters who caused the contamination, I’ve always known one source of hope and pride: the American belief that everyone in this country has the right to clean water. We back up this belief with a host of laws–like the federal Clean Water Act–and regulations that compel our government agencies and courts to honor the right to clean water, even if it means forcing a polluter to spend millions of dollars to restore clean water to a neighborhood.

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for bhaktapur-909812_1280.jpgNow, it’s certainly a fair criticism–I’ve voiced it regularly–that our “clean water” laws could be stronger, enforced more vigilantly, or applied more thoughtfully, to help the disadvantaged in our communities. But the very fact that we have these laws at all, available for enforcement by courts who take them seriously in the great majority of cases in which I have been involved or of which I am aware, separates us from most countries in the world.

We Americans are often stunned to learn that the access to clean water which most of us take for granted is not shared by many in the rest of the world. As reported by an extraordinary organization called “Charity: Water”, there are more than 663 million people in the world who live daily without access to clean water.

I want to take a moment to recognize McHenry County, IL, and its Public Health Administrator, Michael Hill, for disclosing on the County’s website what it calls “Groundwater Contamination Incidents”. http://ow.ly/Gb7v30cyNOF

countryside-2252029_1920.jpgMcHenry, while a fast-developing county, is not far removed from its roots as essentially a rural community, where most residents drew their water directly from the ground, and so contaminated groundwater was a very big deal, indeed. It still is.

As you can see, McHenry and Hill have itemized 11 such “Incidents”, and interested citizens can click onto any one of them, and see a host of relevant documents, including environmental test results, newspaper articles, government correspondence, etc., as to each one of them. (I’m trusting that the County has identified all of the “Incidents” that it should, and that it adds new documents to each “Incident” page as they become available.)

glass-of-water-252x300.jpgThe great majority of families in the rural United States, and many other families, besides, depend on water coming directly from the ground for their everyday living needs. The groundwater also furnishes an emergency supply of clean water all over the country, in the event of contamination of the public water supply by, for example, a catastrophic accident or terrorist attack. So all of us should care about keeping the groundwater clean and safe for human use.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the purity of our groundwater is industrial pollution–for example, factories that dump degreasing chemicals, solvents, plasticizers or volatile organic compounds; gas stations whose underground tanks leak petroleum; landfills whose unlined bottoms provide no barrier against the migration of toxic chemicals directly into the groundwater; and farming operations that saturate the ground with pesticides and herbicides that gradually sink into the groundwater.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has compiled a list of the chemicals most frequently found to be contaminating the groundwater; the typical sources of those chemicals; and the threats to human health that they present. If your family depends upon the groundwater, please take a good look at this list. https://water.usgs.gov/edu/groundwater-contaminants.html

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