“Residents in Flint, Mich., are about to start paying the full cost of their water again, even though what’s flowing from their taps has yet to be declared safe to drink without an approved filter.
On Wednesday, state officials will end a program that has helped pay residents’ bills since a series of ill-fated decisions by state-appointed emergency managers left the city’s water system contaminated with lead. Since that 2014 disaster, the state has spent roughly $41 million in credits to help offset local utility bills. Residents have gotten a 65 percent credit each month on their water use, while commercial accounts received a 20 percent credit.”
— “Flint residents must start paying for water they still can’t drink without a filter,” Brady Dennis, Washington Post
Flint residents pay one of the country’s highest water rates for the privilege of receiving lead-laced drinking water that poisons their children. About 40 percent of Flint residents live below the poverty line.
Residents of Toledo and environs, all 500,000 of them, have been warned not to drink or or wash with their tap water. The region’s water treatment plant found microcystin, a toxin that can cause nausea and liver damage. Boiling the water only concentrates the toxin. The source of the poison is a blue-green algae bloom on the west side of Lake Erie, thought to be caused by excessive phosphorous from agricultural runoff.
More:
“Water crisis grips hundreds of thousands in Toledo area, state of emergency declared,” Tom Henry, Toledo Blade
“A toxic algae scare has left 500,000 people in Ohio without drinking water,” Brad Plumer , Vox
“7 Things You Need To Know About The Toxin That’s Poisoned Ohio’s Drinking Water,” Emily Atkin, Think Progress
“Cyanobacteria and Cyanotoxins: Information for Drinking Water Systems, EPA Office of Water
“Life in West Virginia wasn’t all that easy to begin with. It is the third poorest state in the country; almost 18 percent of its population lives below the poverty line. Many people in the spill zone are now spending a chunk of their paychecks simply to have access to clean water — a necessity so fundamental it’s one that people in a developed country should expect.”
— “Don’t Drink the Water: West Virginia After the Chemical Spill,” Heather Rogers, Rolling Stone
In Charleston, the capital of West Virginia, a 48,000 gallon tank at the Freedom Industries plant dumped a chemical called 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM) into the Elk River, a water source for 300,000 people in nine counties. Residents have been warned not to drink or wash with their tap water. Officials from the West Virginia American Water Company and Freedom Industries immediately held a press conference to address this public health crisis.
West Virginia American Water President Jeffrey McIntyre: “I can’t tell you that the water is unsafe … but I also can’t tell you it’s safe.”
Freedom Industries president Gary Southern: “Our intent is to be absolutely transparent and we’ll tell you what we know, as much as we know. … We have no information on that.”
Lady Bird, a 400-foot-long, $30 million, 1,300-ton German-made tunnel boring machine, will soon be carving miles of 22-foot-wide tunnel 100 feet below the Potomac riverbed. It’s part of DC Water’s Clean Rivers Project, the second-largest civil engineering project in DC history (only Metrorail is bigger). When completed in 2025, the $2.6 billion EPA-funded dig will keep raw sewage from flowing into the Potomac and Anacostia when it rains hard. That’s what happens now (it’s called CSO, “Combined Sewer Overflow”).
Lady Bird will be underground and out of sight, but you can follow her on her own Twitter account.
Summer’s here, and microbes are cavorting in the waves at beaches across the country. If you like to body-surf with bacteria and paddle through pathogens, the Natural Resources Defense Council has your itinerary ready. It’s their annual Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches.
Call the local visitor’s bureau before you pack the car, though. At a time when great white sharks terrorize bathers on both coasts, some spoil-sport health agencies close down beaches just because some teeny critters might cause stomach flu, skin rashes, pinkeye, respiratory infections, meningitis, and hepatitis. Wimps.
More:
“America’s Dirtiest Beaches,” Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones
Image (“The Great Wipeout Off Kanagawa, after Hokusai”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Icelandic singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir (oldsters know her from the Sugarcubes) wrote an Op-Ed in Tuesday’s Times of London linking Iceland’s financial crisis with an incipient ecological danger. If you haven’t been paying attention, Iceland is the worst-case scenario for financial deregulation; its financial services companies borrowed ten or twelve times the value the country’s entire money supply. The notes are due, the banks are closed, the currency is worthless, and the island nation cannot import goods.
The choice of the Timesis important. British depositors had savings in Icelandic on-line banks, and cannot access their funds. Icelandic companies bought British firms, and the U.K. government has seized these assets under an anti-terrorism law.
The Dolphin Kick? Is this sportsmanship? The media brim with reports of Americans winning Olympic gold medals by tormenting Tursiops truncatus. Stomping svelte swimmers is the most revolting athletic competition since the Canadians introduced Baby Seal Harvesting as a demonstration sport in the Winter Olympics.
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