Nancy Colas is a small business owner from Newburgh, New York. She and her family tested above the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum level for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid last year. (Photo by Elissa Nuñez/News21)

NEWBURGH, N.Y. – When Newburgh’s city manager declared a state of emergency last year after tests found dangerous levels of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid in the city’s water supply, Nancy Colas scheduled blood tests for everyone in her family.

“My 17-year-old, he pretty much grew up here, and he’s been drinking that water all his life,”  she said.

The Colas family tested well above the the maximum level allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency. PFOS, a dangerous chemical found in firefighting foam, has been linked to cancer and other medical problems.

“There are effects that I wonder how it’s going to affect us down the line,” Colas said. “Cognitively, are my children going to be OK as they get older?”

Newburgh, a poor city filled with black and Latino residents, is one of many communities of color whose water has been contaminated by nearby Superfund or hazardous waste sites. In this case, the Stewart Air National Guard Base leaked PFOS into the town’s lakes and reservoirs.

Colas, like a growing number of Newburgh residents, is suing the city of Newburgh for negligence, contending that city officials were long aware of the problem before they declared a state of emergency, putting residents at greater risk of illness.

“It hurts to know that they knew, and they didn’t say anything,” she said. “I’m sure there are people that knew.”

And much like other Newburgh residents, Colas also thinks that had she lived in a different town or been born a different race, she would’ve never been exposed to PFOS.

“It is an environmental justice issue because if we were sitting in Deer Park, Long Island, I don’t think it would have ever been an issue,” Colas said. “I don’t think there would have been contamination, period. Because someone would have said ‘not in my backyard.’”

The Hudson River runs alongside the city of Newburgh. (Photo by Elissa Nuñez/News21)––≠

Many residents, including city officials, said the Department of Defense would be more motivated to clean up the Superfund site if Newburgh were a whiter, more affluent town.

“It certainly feels like that might be part of it, because why are they ignoring us?” said Genie Abrams, a Newburgh City Council member. “Are they ignoring other communities, the wealthier communities, the whiter communities?

Some residents said town meetings meant to update residents are poorly publicized. Many still haven’t been blood tested, specifically in the Spanish-speaking community. The city government has posted materials in both Spanish and Creole on its website, but community activists said it’s not enough.

“For this level of danger, there should be letters being sent out to every single home periodically to update, and that’s not happening in English and Spanish,” said Kevindaryan Lujan, a Newburgh resident. “So this is an issue the community is concerned about. And there’s whole bulks of the community that are unaware of what’s going on.”

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is working to complete a multimillion dollar filtration plant to treat Newburgh’s poisoned water by October. State officials and environmental experts are pressing the Department of Defense to clean up contamination at the Superfund site.

“The federal and the state government have really been passing the buck to each other on this issue, no one really wants to take care of it,” Lujan said. “It’s kind of being put under the rug, and people are still scared.”

Newburgh will return to its original water supply in the fall when the filtration plant is fully constructed. “We need to have clean water here, it’s a basic human right for anyone, no matter what your income level is,” Abrams said.

To see the full News21 report on “Troubled Water,” go to troubledwater.news21.com on Aug. 14.

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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.

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Bottled water piles up in the home of Texas resident Leroy Thomas, who has long relied on bottled water. (Photo by Brandon Kitchin/News21)

PHOENIX – When Bonnie Sicard of Beebe Plain, Vermont, started receiving notices about arsenic in her drinking water more than than five years ago, she wasn’t going to risk poisoning her family. She went straight to bottled water.

“I got seven grandsons,” she said. “When they used to come over when they were little, we didn’t let them drink the water.”

Maine officials often recommend bottled water when they find traces of arsenic because it’s less expensive than water treatment options.

However, the cost adds up over time. Sicard spends about $20 a week, she said.

Bottled water has become the No. 1 beverage choice in the U.S., with 12.8 billion gallons sold in 2016, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation. Wholesale sales totalled $16 billion last year.

But bottled water can come from many sources, but most of it is either spring water or purified tap water.

Bonnie Sicard of Beebe Plain, Vermont, holds up a boil water advisory. She drinks bottled water. (Photo by Fionnuala O’Leary/News21)

About 45 percent of bottled water, including leading brands Dasani and Aquafina, comes from public tap water that is treated before being bottled, according to the companies’ websites and California-based scientist Peter Gleick, who wrote the book “Bottled and Sold.”

Arizona State University professor of practice Elisabeth Graffy, who used to work at the U.S. Geological Survey, said consumers shouldn’t assume any bottled water is completely safe.

“You should be able to trust tap water more than bottled water,” Graffy said. “Bottled water is actually not regulated the same as tap water.”

The Environmental Protection Agency monitors public water supplies, and it makes violations available to the public. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration monitors bottled water.

While there are some similar regulations, according to a 2010 analysis by the nonprofit EWG, 18 percent of bottled water brands do not provide customers with the source of the water, and 32 percent do not give any information about how the brands test the water.

A 2008 study by the same group found 38 pollutants – from industrial chemicals to bacteria – in 10 brands of bottled water.

However, Graffy said consumers must make the choice.

“There are concerns when you’re talking about the implications of people relying on bottled water,” Graffy said. “But then, you compare that to the concern of water that you know is contaminated … that may be a risk that is fine.”

To see the full News21 report on “Troubled Water,” go to troubledwater.news21.com on Aug. 14.

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A flag in the city of Waukesha is displayed downtown. (Photo by Rachel Konieczny/News21)

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 drinking water systems.

In 2010, Waukesha submitted an application to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for an alternative water supply from Lake Michigan, citing its radium contamination, depleting aquifer and unsustainable water supply.

The more than $200 million proposal, known as the Great Water Alliance, will return 100 percent of the used water back into the lake. The city plans to draw 10-million gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan.

The Great Lakes Compact, the legally binding agreement crafted by the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces, details how the states and provinces regulate the Great Lake Basin’s water supply. Any community applying for a diversion must demonstrate it has exhausted all other options for getting water, according to the compact’s website.

Waukesha met the compact’s requirements, and the governments involved supported the agreement.

However, individuals have mixed feelings about the alliance. While residents mainly argue the project will hurt the city economically because water rates will increase, water advocacy groups cite the effect the diversion will have on the Root River carrying water back to Lake Michigan and on the lake itself.

Sandy Hamm, Waukesha resident, said he thinks the diversion of water from Lake Michigan to Waukesha is unreasonable. (Photo by Rachel Konieczny/News21)

Waukesha resident Sandy Hamm said the diversion is unreasonable.

“It’s just foolhardy to be pumping water from Lake Michigan 20-some miles out here and then pumping it back,” Hamm said.

Cheryl Nenn, riverkeeper at the nonprofit group Milwaukee Riverkeeper, said her organization also opposes the diversion.

Cheryl Nenn, riverkeeper at the Milwaukee Riverkeeper group, said her organization opposes the diversion of water from Lake Michigan to Waukesha. (Photo by Rachel Konieczny/News21)

“We’ve never thought the diversion was the best option for Waukesha. We always thought they were asking for a lot more water than they were currently using,” Nenn said, referencing the city’s average daily water use of 6 million gallons in contrast to the proposal’s 10 million gallons. Nenn said the city must be prepared to extinguish a fire with its largest facility out of service.

Nenn said the Root River, which will carry water back to Lake Michigan, could have increased algae blooms due to higher amounts of nutrients entering the river.

“When there’s lower flow (during the summer), the pollution is more concentrated in the river so that’s something we would be concerned about,” Nenn said.

However, Waukesha resident Chris Curren said he supports the project.

“Other than figuring out how to pay for it, I’m for it,” Curren said. “Those against it seem to be because they think it will open up a floodgate, allowing other cities to do the same.”

One of those residents, Laurie Longtine, said she thinks the city is setting a negative legal precedent.

“I can just see a scenario where another community within the Great Lakes basin decides to apply for water … to grow and keep expanding,” said Longtine, a board member of the Waukesha County Environmental Action League. “All of these other communities could all stick a straw in it at any time and withdraw.”

While officials said they believe the city’s aquifer is declining and cited that as one of the reasons for the diversion, residents say otherwise.

Like Longtine, Waukesha resident Steve Edlund agrees the aquifer is rising. He began researching the United States Geological Survey’s data on the city’s aquifer in 2013 and found it was no longer declining 5 to 9 feet per year, but rather increasing.

However, Dan Duchniak, Waukesha Water Utility general manager, said the aquifer levels frequently fluctuate, causing the aquifer to appear to be rising.

Dan Duchniak, Waukesha Water Utility general manager, said the Great Water Alliance will likely be completed by 2023. The alliance will divert water from Lake Michigan to Waukesha. (Photo by Rachel Konieczny/News21)

Edlund said the radium problem is practically a nonissue, citing the city’s reluctance to install radium filters on four of the system’s wells that he said would effectively eliminate the contamination.

Duchniak said the diversion is not just about radium. He also identified total dissolved solids, or saltwater, as an additional contaminant.

“If this was just about radium, it would have been an easy solution,” Duchniak said. “It’s not just about radium – it’s about a sustainable water supply because we have other contaminants that we’ll have to deal with, and there’s other emerging contaminants that are coming down the pipeline.”

Edlund said he is also concerned with the socioeconomic impact the diversion will have on the community.

“There is no public assistance for your water bill and that’s scary,” Edlund said. “This is going to have a huge impact, especially on people that are lower income or fixed income. They are not going to be able to afford to live in the city of Waukesha. They’ll be forced out of their homes.”

The diversion does not have a definitive route for the pipeline yet. However, the project is expected to be completed by 2023, Duchniak said.

To see the full News21 report on “Troubled Water,” go troubledwater.news21.com on Aug. 14.

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Experts say Cape Cod’s sandy soils make the groundwater especially susceptible to contamination, a factor in Hyannis’ recent contamination that resulted in a 2016 drinking water health advisory. (Photo by Rachel Konieczny/News21)

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 contamination site.

Phil Brown, a professor of sociology and health sciences at Northeastern University, praised the response after the city discovered the contamination in 2007.

“The local government has been incredibly responsive,” Brown said. “They’ve done their best to use a filtration system, to educate people and to come speak to public forums to help people understand that they are doing a lot working to shut down (contaminated) wells in the community.”

Brown leads the university’s Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute and recently worked with the Environmental Working Group, a national organization specializing in toxic chemicals research, to create a national interactive map that cross references the locations of public water systems with known per- and substance contamination. These substances, man-made and toxic to humans, prove difficult to remove from the environment and are found in a variety of stain-resistant, waterproof and non-stick products.

The map combines federal drinking water data with documented cases of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance contamination from manufacturing plants, military air bases, civilian airports and fire training sites, according to the project’s website.

“A lot of (regulation) does have to be done at the local level because local water districts are where we’re measuring a lot of this,” Brown said. “We’re actually very pleased to see the level of interest by the local government.”

But some Hyannis residents hesitate to drink the tap water, which officials have deemed safe.

“After the whole Flint thing, I woke up one morning, and they said the Hyannis Water System is contaminated, too, so we have to lay off (the water) until they fix it,” resident Calvin Wiggins said.

Calvin Wiggins has lived in Hyannis, a community in Cape Cod, for 20 years. He buys bottled water for drinking because he doesn’t trust the water there. (Photo by Rachel Konieczny/News21)

Wiggins, who moved to Hyannis from Jamaica 20 years ago, said he continues to buy bottled water for drinking but uses the tap water for showering and washing dishes.

“It is a little expensive to buy bottled water. But at the same time, you’ve got to work it into your budget,” Wiggins said. “You’ve got to pay for the water anyway, so add a little more to it. I make sure I’m on the safer track.”

Wiggins said he moved to Hyannis to achieve economic prosperity. He relied on his tailoring experience in Jamaica and now owns and operates his own upholstery company while working as a part-time musician. Known as the “Capital of the Cape,” Hyannis leads Cape Cod’s commercial and transportation sectors while capitalizing on its summertime tourist industry.

Experts say Cape Cod’s sandy soils make the groundwater especially susceptible to contamination, a factor in Hyannis’ recent contamination that resulted in a 2016 drinking water health advisory.

“Cape Cod is a deposit of a glacier 15,000 years ago and basically comprised of sand outwash and a sandy deposit,” said Thomas Cambareri, director of water resources for the Cape Cod Commission. “It’s very porous, highly permeable sands that comprise Cape Cod.”

Cambareri, a hydrogeologist, said the county is trying to better understand the contamination and how to effectively clean it up.

The Silent Spring Institute first discovered these emerging contaminants on Cape Cod in 2009, but they didn’t reach unacceptable levels until the EPA raised its standards. The institute concluded the contamination in Hyannis came from aqueous film-forming foam, commonly used at military bases and firefighting academies. These findings helped researchers and officials determine the source of the contamination: the Barnstable County Fire and Rescue Training Academy.

Laurel Schaider, a research scientist at the Silent Spring Institute who has tested Hyannis water, said the contamination problem is twofold.

“When we talk about the firefighting foams getting into the wells, that’s related to environmental contamination. When the foams are used, they can run off into the soils and then ultimately percolate down into the groundwater,” Schaider said. “When we’re talking about household wastewater, we know that (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are used in many household items, such as stain-resistant carpets, furniture and nonstick cookware.”

Brown said researchers have a long way to go.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done in green chemistry to find chemical alternatives that are safer,” Brown said.

In addition to finding chemical alternatives, Hyannis is exploring other ways to help ensure residents are drinking safe water.

“One approach is the trend toward more municipal water supplies,” said Mark Forest, chairman of the Cape Cod Conservation District.

While less than 20 percent of residents rely on private wells, Forest said they can better ensure their safety by hooking up to the municipal water supply.

Forest praised the Cape’s advancements thus far, highlighting one development being tested at the Joint Base Cape Cod military site.

Mark Forest, chairman of the Cape Cod Conservation District, praised the response to water contamination in the area. (Photo by Rachel Konieczny/News21)

“One innovative way of dealing with this (contamination) is called permeable reactive walls,” Forest said. “What the wall does is it sort of intercepts pollution as it moves along the surface or just below the surface of groundwater.”

According to the EPA, the walls will be introduced once data from the military site has been collected and analyzed.

Barnstable County Administrator Jack Yunits, who oversees the fire training academy, said the academy stopped using the foam in 2007 after learning of its potential harm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said studies have suggested that exposure could cause cancer and low birth weights in infants.

“Now we’re in the process of cleaning up the site,” Yunits said. “We’ve removed a lot of the contaminated soils, and we have a treatment system out there where we try to grab the water before it gets to the wells and run it back.”

Yunits said he hopes the federal government better regulates these emerging contaminants.

“I just wish they’d deal with it like they did with the Agent Orange problem and start to address people’s concerns,” Yunits said. “I don’t think (these contaminants are) going to be an epidemic of proportion that Agent Orange was if we control it. But if it starts to become a problem for mothers and kids, then we’ve got an issue.”

In June, Barnstable County agreed to pay the town of Barnstable $2.95 million for reimbursement associated with the contamination from the chemicals used in the firefighting foam at the academy. The town of Barnstable, Hyannis’ neighbor to its north, owns the academy. Both the town of Barnstable and the county have filed separate lawsuits against the foam manufacturers, including industrial giant 3M. The lawsuits are currently in federal court, Yunits said.

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When it comes to improving water quality, Indiana University professor David Konisky said progress has been uneven – especially for “communities of color or low-income where the investments or the politics” are not evenly spread. (Photo by Brandon Kitchin/News21)

PHOENIX  – Poor and minority communities have long suffered from a disproportionate share of harmful environmental problems, such as contaminated water and polluted air.

And one Indiana University associate professor fears those environmental justice issues will only get worse under President Donald Trump.

David Konisky, who researches politics and public policy and focuses on environmental justice issues, said President Barack Obama had started making progress on the issues. But they don’t seem to rank high under the new Trump administration, he said.

“Following the election of president Trump and the appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the (Environmental Protection Agency), these positive developments are at risk of being reversed,” he wrote in an article published in The Conversation. “There is a clear signal being sent in the proposed budget.”

Under Trump’s proposed budget, the environmental justice program within the EPA could see a decrease of funding of 78 percent, dropping its financial resources from $6.7 million to $1.5 million, according to an article in The Oregonian.

Konisky told News21 that the proposed move could hurt communities often targeted because of race or socioeconomic status.

When it comes to water quality specifically, Konisky said progress has been uneven – especially for “communities of color or low-income where the investments or the politics” are not evenly spread.

He said while it’s important for the federal government to address environmental justice issues, the states must step up their efforts when the federal government lags.

But it’s not just about the environment, he said.

“It speaks to economics,” he said. “It speaks to social structures. It speaks to politics. And this is frankly what makes it so challenging for an agency like the EPA or a state environmental agency.

“These are public health agencies. It is their mission to protect human health and the environment.”

He said community and nonprofit organizations also play an influential role in advocating for changes in the places that need the most help.

“There is a very active environmental justice community,” Konisky said. “Often these are grassroots neighborhood-based organizations where what they lack in financial resources, they make up for with their commitment and their passion and sort of the social capital that they bring in their organization to fight back.”

Officials should focus on proper implementation and enforcement of policies moving forward, he said. However, he said environmental justice issues tends to be complicated.

“When we have so many different governments who are responsible for that, you are likely to get some differences in outcomes because of implementation strategies,” Konisky said. “I actually think we don’t know enough about what works and what doesn’t work, and that’s something which I think certainly requires more attention.”

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