posted on March 19, 2004 07:12:59 AM new
this is how one spreads diseases around the world, especially from a so-called advanced techno culture like the US....yet more monies is spent on military to make corperate greed satisfied and here is a perfect example of how this present administration really cares about it's own voters....next time you vote...make sure...you vote for clean water...and forget the promises from snake oil politics ( poli..means many, and tics... means horrendous blood sucking creatures )
H2Oops
EPA exaggerated claims about clean drinking water by Amanda Griscom
16 Mar 2004
The U.S. EPA’s claim that it is successfully protecting the nation's drinking-water supplies seems to have sprung a leak.
Earlier this month, the EPA's Office of the Inspector General accused officials in the agency of consistently making bogus statements about improvements in the quality of America's tap water. The charges are spelled out in a tellingly titled report: "EPA Claims to Meet Drinking Water Goals Despite Persistent Data Quality Shortcomings" [PDF].
"It's just one more example of Bush officials using cooked-up numbers to try to prove what a great job they're doing," said Erik Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "But the reality is we've got serious problems in our drinking-water quality nationwide, and the EPA's negligence could be putting millions of Americans at risk."
Lead, arsenic, bacteria, pesticides, fecal matter, radioactive contaminants -- oh my! -- these are among the 90 pollutants that states are required to filter from drinking water to meet national standards (standards which, in the case of arsenic, the Bush administration tried to weaken, before public outcry forced it to back off).
But what good are standards when they're not enforced -- or when they're monitored with sloppy and inadequate data?
Critics have asked this question of Bush's EPA before, particularly with respect to air quality, when the agency's enforcement actions against polluting power plants plummeted after Bush took office.
Now, lapses in drinking-water protection may prompt a more emotional reaction from Americans who can't brush their teeth or brew a pot of coffee without being affected.
The OIG report -- delivered by Kwai Chan, the EPA's assistant inspector general -- identified a pattern of false statements about drinking-water quality released by the EPA and promulgated throughout the media. Between 1999 and 2002, the EPA publicly boasted that it met its goal of supplying safe tap water to 91 percent of U.S. residents -- up from 79 percent in 1993. Then, in a June 2003 press release, the agency bumped up the purity estimate even higher: "In 2002, 94 percent of Americans were served by drinking water systems that meet our health-based standards -- an increase of 15 percent in the last decade."
So convincing were these claims that The New York Times published an editorial on the day the press release was issued using almost the same language: "Fully 94 percent of Americans are served by drinking water systems that meet federal health standards," it said.
But the OIG report argues that "due to missing data on violations of drinking water standards, the agency did not in fact meet its drinking water performance goals." The EPA's conclusions were based on "flawed and incomplete" information, he said. According to the agency's own data, 35 percent of known health standard violations nationwide have never even been entered into the EPA's compliance database. On top of that, the agency's regional inspections of drinking-water quality have plunged by more than half in the last three years, from 488 in 2000 to 228 in 2003.
"All these numbers we're looking at are EPA's own," Olson told Muckraker. "It's not like they're debatable, or environmentalists are making them up."
There's been a severe breakdown in the regulatory process," he continued. "The gears have been stripped because EPA is not insisting and ensuring that the states do their job of accurately monitoring and reporting their water quality." Olson added that though the OIG report does not quantify precisely how exaggerated the EPA's estimates have been, water scientists within the agency have told him that in 2002, only about 81 percent of the jurisdictions monitored had safe drinking water -- 13 percent lower than what the agency reported, which would mean that tens of millions of additional people are at risk from unsafe water.
Among those at highest risk are residents of the nation's capital, which is one of the only jurisdictions in the country that reports water problems directly to the EPA, rather than to a state government. In late February, word got out about unusually high levels of lead in the city's pipelines. D.C. health officials issued a warning to pregnant women and children under 6 whose homes and schools are serviced with lead pipes to stop drinking unfiltered tap water and get blood tests. Today The Washington Post reported that EPA and city officials had known about the high lead levels more than a year ago, but essentially ignored the problem.
News of extensive lead contamination in D.C.'s water was met with howls of protest from the environmental justice community: "EPA needs to show that it's willing to take leadership in this situation," Damu Smith, executive director of the D.C.-based National Black Environmental Justice Network, told Muckraker. "They're the only ones with the power to stop it, and so far their track record shows a lot of bumbling and fumbling. It's been pretty horrible."
But as bad as the D.C. situation is, it will be easier to tackle than the challenge of adequately enforcing drinking-water standards on a national scale.
In a memo responding to the OIG report, Benjamin Grumbles, acting assistant administrator for water at the EPA, acknowledged "the very real need to improve data quality," the presence of "incomplete" data, and the fact that "more work remains to be done" to improve the regulatory process -- uncharacteristically contrite for a Bush administration official.
posted on March 19, 2004 09:36:47 AM new
Canadian Company Pollutes U.S.
NORTHPORT, Wash. — The world's largest refinery of zinc and lead, located in Canada 10 miles north of the U.S. border, has turned Washington state's beaches black and polluted the water.
The company, Teck Cominco, has discharged 1,000 tons of the black smelting byproduct called slag for almost 100 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (search). The EPA is now trying to force Teck Cominco — under U.S. Superfund (search) law — to pay for a comprehensive study, and then clean it up.
But Teck Cominco doesn't accept this.
"We were a facility in Canada, permitted to do what we were doing, discharging, we believed, a material that was inert, and now ends up in the United States. And the U.S. is trying to step across the border and enforce its regulations on a facility that exists outside the country," said Dave Godlewski of Teck Cominco (search).
Nobody's disputing that this area is polluted with arsenic, copper, lead and zinc, and that the continued presence in the water and sand most likely pose serious ongoing health risks. There's even consensus on the principle that the polluter pays for the cleanup. Yet, Teck Cominco won't budge on which country's laws control the process.
Under Canadian law, Teck Cominco would have full control of the environmental study, and would only have to clean up the pollution it found to be hazardous. The EPA and the people who live near the lake say that's unacceptable.
The Democrats ran on 'Honesty' and I told 'em at the time they would never get anywhere. It was too radical for politics. The Republicans ran on 'Common Sense' and the returns showed that there were 8 million more people in the United States who had 'Common Sense' enough not to believe that there was 'Honesty' in politics." --Will Rogers
posted on March 19, 2004 11:22:50 AM new
ever wonder if some bottled water is just filtered city water......drink up people....corperate way to make money, when governments do not look after the water, people buy bottled water....hmmm...me thinks a plot to buy bottled water for some reason....
Coke water in cancer scare
By Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Affairs Editor, Evening Standard
19 March 2004
Coca-Cola today recalled every bottle of its controversial "pure" mineral water Dasani in a cancer scare.
It came after the 95p bottles of water were found to be contaminated with illegal levels of bromate, a potentially cancer causing chemical
Coca-Cola said all 500,000 bottles of the carbonated water, which is drawn from public water supplies in Sidcup, will be cleared from stores within 24 hours.
The scare also raises disturbing questions about the quality of Thames Water's household supplies in the Sidcup area.
The announcement is a huge blow to Coca-Cola's bid to establish Dasani as one of Britain's leading mineral water brands following its £7 million launch last month.
The Food Standards Agency said the withdrawal was "a sensible measure as bromate is a chemical that could cause an increased cancer risk". Coca-Cola said there was "no immediate health or safety issue".
