“Troubled Water,” an investigation into drinking water contamination in communities across the country, is the 2017 project of the Carnegie-Knight News21 program, a national multimedia reporting project produced by top journalism students and graduates. Each year, students selected into the program report in-depth on a topic of national importance. This year, 29 journalism students from […]
To see the full News21 report on “Troubled Water” and view the 30-minute documentary, go to troubledwater.news21.com. Watch the trailer here: Troubled Water Trailer from News21 on Vimeo.
WAUKESHA, Wisc. – The city of Waukesha has a radium problem, and it’s looking to Lake Michigan for a solution. Although talks of drawing water from nearby Lake Michigan began in 2002, Waukesha has struggled with radium contamination since the late 1970s when the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the acceptable limit for radium in public […]
In the U.S., it’s often a case of the bigger the system, the better the drinking water quality. Most water systems in the U.S. are small and serve 3,300 people or less. These smaller systems may be numerous, but they only serve 7 percent of the population. The vast majority of Americans get their water from larger systems. Smaller […]
The majority of the 43 million Americans who rely on private wells for their drinking water also use onsite sewage disposal systems known as septic systems. Septic systems rely on the earth to sanitize the water, but they’re complicated. In fact, many Americans don’t understand how they work. News21 reporter Bryn Caswell explains what these […]
HYANNIS, Mass. – When Hyannis officials discovered that unacceptable levels of contaminants from firefighting foam had leaked into the city’s water supply, they took action. Officials immediately provided cases of water to 18,000 residents of the Cape Cod community and spent $6 million to install an activated carbon filtration system. Now, they are cleaning the […]