Signs of the water crisis continue

Farmworkers’ Endless Worry: Tainted Tap Water

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

Published: November 13, 2012

SEVILLE, Calif. — Like most children, the students at Stone Corral Elementary School here rejoice when the bell rings for recess and delight in christening a classroom pet.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Fifth and sixth grade students in Seville, Calif., took a water break before physical education class.

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Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Bertha Diaz used the seat belts in her car to strap in a five-gallon water bottle she filled at a vendor's stand in Orosi, Calif., to provide drinking water for her family.

But while growing up in this impoverished agricultural community of numbered roads and lush citrus orchards, young people have learned a harsh life lesson: “No tomes el agua!” — “Don’t drink the water!”

Seville, with a population of about 300, is one of dozens of predominantly Latino unincorporated communities in the Central Valley plagued for decades by contaminated drinking water. It is the grim result of more than half a century in which chemical fertilizers, animal wastes, pesticides and other substances have infiltrated aquifers, seeping into the groundwater and eventually into the tap. An estimated 20 percent of small public water systems in Tulare County are unable to meet safe nitrate levels, according to a United Nations representative.

In farmworker communities like Seville, a place of rusty rural mailboxes and backyard roosters where the average yearly income is $14,000, residents like Rebecca Quintana pay double for water: both for the tap water they use only to shower and wash clothes, and for the five-gallon bottles they must buy weekly for drinking, cooking and brushing their teeth.

It is a life teeming with worry: about children accidentally sipping contaminated water while cooling off with a garden hose, about not having enough clean water for an elderly parent’s medications, about finding a rock while cleaning the feeding tube of a severely disabled daughter, as Lorie Nieto did. She vowed never to use tap water again.

Chris Kemper, the school’s principal, budgets $100 to $500 a month for bottled water. He recalled his astonishment, upon his arrival four years ago, at encountering the “ghost” drinking fountains, shut off to protect students from “weird foggyish water,” as one sixth grader, Jacob Cabrera, put it. Mr. Kemper said he associated such conditions with third world countries. “I always picture it as a laptop a month for the school,” he said of the added cost of water.

Here in Tulare County, one of the country’s leading dairy producers, where animal waste lagoons penetrate the air and soil, most residents rely on groundwater as the source for drinking water. A study by the University of California, Davis, this year estimated that 254,000 people in the Tulare Basin and Salinas Valley, prime agricultural regions with about 2.6 million residents, were at risk for nitrate contamination of their drinking water. Nitrates have been linked to thyroid disease and make infants susceptible to “blue baby syndrome,” a potentially fatal condition that interferes with the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen.

Communities like Seville, where corroded piping runs through a murky irrigation ditch and into a solitary well, are particularly vulnerable to nitrate contamination, lacking financial resources for backup systems. Fertilizer and other chemicals applied to cropland decades ago will continue to affect groundwater for years, according to the Davis study.

“You can’t smell it,” Mrs. Quintana said of the dangers of the tap. “You can’t see it. It looks like plain beautiful water.”

Situated off the state’s psychic map, lacking political clout and even mayors, places like Seville and Tooleville to the south have long been excluded from regional land use and investment decisions, said Phoebe S. Seaton, the director of a community initiative for California Rural Legal Assistance. Residents rely on county governments and tiny resident-run public utility districts. The result of this jurisdictional patchwork is a fragmented water delivery system and frequently deteriorating infrastructure.

Many such communities started as farm labor camps without infrastructure, said John A. Capitman, a professor at California State University, Fresno, and the executive director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute. Today, one in five residents in the Central Valley live below the federal poverty line. Many spend up to 10 percent of their income on water. “The laborers and residents of this region have borne a lot of the social costs of food production,” Professor Capitman said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/us/tainted-water-in-california-farmworker-communities.html?hp

Continued water contamination is minimized

Found this article in the Dickinson Press today and worry about the minimization that is widespread regarding out drinking water in North Dakota

Published July 26, 2012, 12:00 AM

Regent water safe despite notice

Regent residents can continue to safely use their drinking water, even though a public notice has been issued indicating the city had three violations in the annual Drinking Water Compliance Report for 2011. The report was issued this month.

By: Betsy Simon, The Dickinson Press

The violations included microbiological violations, community water systems, public notification rule violations and failure to monitor/report major violations with Chloramine, which is a combination of chlorine and ammonia.

LeeAnn Tillotson, environmental scientist with the North Dakota Department of Health’s Division of Municipal Facilities Drinking Water Program, said it appears the city forgot to collect a sample, which she said isn’t uncommon.

“They just missed a sample and there hasn’t been any indication with past samples that the city has tested positive for bacteria,” Tillotson said. “The city appears to be back in compliance now though, so there is no need for people within the city to look for alternative sources of drinking water.”

Regent city auditor Karen Kouba said the violation was due to timing.

“We didn’t have a maintenance person for a while in 2011, and they were the ones who usually took the monthly water samples,” she said. “Then, when we did get the sample sent in it was on a Friday and they don’t take water samples on Fridays, but everything is good now and there are no problems with the water itself.”

The water is going to kill us

Environmental violations at a fracking waste water disposal well near Dickinson that threatened drinking water in Stark County have prompted North Dakota’s largest civil case and the first ever criminal case against an oil and gas operator.

The company, Halek Operating ND LLC, faces up to $1.5 million in fines for injecting salt water used in hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, into the disposal site after having been told to stop because the site was not up to state standards.

The North Dakota Industrial Commission filed the civil complaint against Halek in Burleigh County District Court.

A criminal complaint filed in Stark County charges Nathan Garber, president of Executive Drilling LLC, with a Class C felony. The case alleges that Garber knowingly violated Industrial Commission rules by directing employees of another company to modify the dump site to deceive inspectors.

Executive Drilling LLC is somehow related to Halek, but officials are unclear about the connection, said Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources.

Helms said this is the most significant environmental case in North Dakota that he’s aware of.

“It’s a very serious violation and it needs to be dealt with in a very serious manner,” Helms said.

Halek attempted to drill for oil in the Lodgepole formation, but was unsuccessful, Helms said. The company then converted the oil well into a salt water disposal well.

Rules require disposal wells to have three layers of steel to protect drinking water, Helms said. In this case, there was only one layer of protection, he said.

“They’ve tripled the risk of contaminating a drinking water zone with this well,” Helms said.

If salt water had contaminated the drinking water zones, it would have been very serious, which is why officials are pursuing maximum civil and criminal penalties, Helms said.

“It takes many, many years to clean it up, if it can be done at all,” he said.

Officials will be testing at the site to check for possible contamination, Helms said. The Industrial Commission is now in control of that well and not allowing it to be used.

The North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation assisted in the case and determined that Garber was the individual responsible for signing paperwork to direct another company to modify the well site to mislead inspectors.

“It was literally done in the middle of the night,” Helms said.

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said the willful violation of Industrial Commission rules warrant a felony charge against Garber. The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Garber is believed to be in Texas and officials will attempt to extradite him to North Dakota, Stenehjem said.

Halek Operating has 21 days to respond to the civil complaint. Attempts to reach Garber and Halek representatives for comment were unsuccessful.

During a meeting of the Industrial Commission on Tuesday, members called for aggressive enforcement of environmental rules.

“There will not be any exceptions or leniency when these things happen,” said Gov. Jack Dalrymple.

A year ago, the Industrial Commission cited Halek for improperly cleaning up an oil spill, also near Dickinson. Halek faced more than $588,000 in potential fines, but was ordered to pay less than 10 percent of that with the rest suspended, Helms said. Halek also paid a $20,000 cash bond in case future contamination showed up, Helms said.

Halek could be ordered to pay the suspended amount of the fine, $528,750, if the company has another similar violation before Nov. 4.

Helms said he does not think this new case will trigger that suspended fine because it’s a different type of violation.

However, Helms said he expects the company will end up paying a higher percentage of the fines in this new case.

“I would think that they’ll be much more severe with action on this second violation,” Helms said.

Halek Operating ND LLC is registered with the Secretary of State with a Dickinson post office box and a Twin Cities cellphone number. It’s also associated with Halek Energy Partners in Texas.

http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/article/id/59852/