Kip Sauve, 59, stands in front of his cabin holding one of the notices he was given not to drink his water. He lives in the Kontree Apartments in Lynden, Wash. (Photo by Nicole Tyau/News21)

LYNDEN, Wash. – Kip Sauve has lived at the Kontree Apartments in Lynden, Washington, for two years. He won’t drink the water from the tap. And he won’t let his pet cat and bird drink it, either.

For more than a year, the residents of the complex have periodically received “do not drink” advisories  after authorities found excessive levels of the pesticide dinoseb and nitrates in their community’s well water.

Still, Sauve enjoys the small garden in his backyard: “I got peas, beans, radishes, corn, lettuce, sweet lettuce, beans, peas, carrots. I got potatoes.”

The area is known for its crops, especially its blueberry, raspberry and strawberry farms. The farming may have contributed to the water issues facing Sauve’s small community.

The EPA banned dinoseb, an herbicide widely used to control weeds, in 1986. However, it’s an example of legacy contamination, a term used to describe pollution from the past that still lingers in the environment today. It’s often difficult, expensive or sometimes impossible to clean up the contamination.

That means the residents of the Kontree Apartments – and others across the nation who must deal with legacy contaminants – often have few options when trying to clean up their water.

The apartments are a cluster of old migrant worker quarters marketed as cabins. Sauve said when he first moved to the community, he began having abdominal pains after drinking coffee in the morning at a friend’s house.

“I said, ‘What the hell?’” Sauve said. “And he told me, ‘Yeah, it’s the water.’ So ever since that I buy my own water.”

Though Sauve can’t drive, he said he makes his way to the store to buy at least 15 gallon jugs of water each month. He wishes he could live somewhere else, but he can’t afford to because he lives off disability checks.

Christina Hayden lives at Kontree Apartments, but she didn’t know about the “do not drink” alert posted by the Washington State Department of Health. (Photo by Nicole Tyau/News21)

Resident Christina Hayden said she was never informed of the contamination.

Hayden moved to Kontree in April 2017. She said she’s friends with 19 residents who live there, and no one trusts the water.

Derek Pell, a planning and engineering manager for the Washington Department of Health’s Northwest Office of Drinking Water, said the contamination is likely the result of a spill that still manifests in the water supply. He said that while the levels have gone down, they are still above the maximum contaminant level.

To Pell, the solution is simple: Connect to Lynden’s water. Various local departments have worked to get Kontree hooked up to that water line, but progress has been slow because of a water-rights issue with a nearby community.

Even if Kontree can hook up to the municipal line, Pell said it might mean a higher utility cost for the residents such as Sauve who live off disability or welfare income.

“Our priority is we want those folks to have safe and reliable water,” Pell said. “When that water isn’t safe, we make sure people know how to protect themselves.”

Kip Sauve, 59, buys at least 15 gallons of water every month for himself and his pet cat and bird. He doesn’t trust the water that comes out of his faucet in Lynden, Wash. (Photo by Nicole Tyau/News21)

News21 reporter Jackie Wang contributed to this article.
To see the full News21 report on “Troubled Water,” go to troubledwater.news21.com on Aug. 14.

The post Small Washington community grapples with legacy contamination appeared first on Troubled Water.

At Local Greens, Ron and Faye Mitchell mostly cultivate microgreens, which grow to about 10 inches before they are cut and sold in the area. (Photo by Jackie Wang/News21)

BERKELEY, Calif. – Tucked behind a Whole Foods in a corner warehouse unit, Ron and Faye Mitchell grow 8,000 pounds of food each month without using any soil, and they recycle the water their plants don’t use.

Hydroponic farming grows crops without soil. Instead, farmers add nutrients to the water the plants use. This method can produce a wide variety of plants, from leafy greens to dwarf fruit trees.

According to a study by the Arizona State University School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, hydroponic lettuce farming used about one-tenth of the water that conventional lettuce farming did in Yuma, Ariz. A similar study from the University of Nevada, Reno, found that growing strawberries hydroponically in a greenhouse environment also used significantly less water than conventional methods.

WATCH: How hydroponic farming uses water

The Mitchells started production of Local Greens in February 2014. They primarily grow microgreens such as kale, kohlrabi and sprouted beans while using the same amount of water as two average households and the same amount of electricity as three in a month, they said.

“Who knows what you’re getting when you’re using soil?” Faye said. “Hydroponics is a fully contained system, so we know exactly what’s in our water, what we want in it and what we don’t want in it, and we can control that.”

Ron Mitchell, 67, said the stacked trays inside his hydroponic farming facility in California allow them to grow twice as much. (Photo by Jackie Wang/News21)

Ron installed a water filtration system he customized. He removes fluoride, a common additive in municipal water, and chlorine, a common disinfection byproduct, before adding oxygen and other plant-specific nutrients.

To make use of the warehouse’s tall ceilings, the Mitchells stack six trays of microgreen seeds on top of each other. At one end, an irrigation spout controls the amount and type of water sent through the trays.

“Some plants don’t need or want nutrients because they have it in their seed,” Ron said. He explained that pea shoots don’t need any additives, but sunflowers require copious amounts of nutrients to grow quickly.

The water the plants don’t use is captured at the other end of the tray and reused for the next watering, with the nutrients replenished as needed. The additional nutrients in the water are organic and naturally-occurring since they don’t have to spray pesticides or herbicides in their controlled warehouse environment, Faye said.

The number of greenhouse farms has more than doubled since 2007, according to the 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture. Some hydroponics advocates see the practice as a solution to a global food and water crisis.

“I don’t think it could take over the farming industry entirely because of the types of plants and vegetables people want to eat,” Faye said. “But I definitely think it could make a dent in the farming industry and make its place and replace certain types of farms for a more efficient and, in some cases, less expensive system.

At Local Goods in California, Ron Mitchell’s monitoring system checks the plants’ water supplies for temperature, pH level and electric conductivity. (Photo by Jackie Wang/News21)

The post Urban hydroponic farms offer sustainable water solutions appeared first on Troubled Water.

The post PIN Query: Are registered superfund sites contaminating your water? appeared first on Troubled Water.

The post PIN Query: Is your drinking water contaminated? appeared first on Troubled Water.

The post PIN Query — Do you have problems with your well or septic system? appeared first on Troubled Water.

The post PIN Query — How has farming activity affected your drinking water? appeared first on Troubled Water.

The post PIN Query — What are your concerns about your drinking water? appeared first on Troubled Water.