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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Cows feed inside a barn at Dairy Dreams, a large-scale dairy operated by Don Niles in Kewaunee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Chelsea Rae Ybanez/News21)

KEWAUNEE COUNTY, Wisc. – In 2014, a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher Mark Borchardt indicated that 40 of 131 residential wells sampled in Kewaunee County were contaminated with bovine feces.

Lynn Utesch, the founder of environmental advocacy group Kewaunee Cares, sees the presence of bovine feces in the water as coinciding with the expansion of large-scale dairy farms, known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations, in the area.

Kewaunee has 16 of these large-scale farms, with many of those managing thousands of cows – many more than the traditional farmers that once dominated the area.

Lee Luft, chairman of the Kewaunee County Groundwater Task Force, has been focusing on groundwater issues associated with large-scale dairy farming practices.

“We saw a very substantial increase in herd counts over the past 20 years or so,” he said. “In fact, Kewaunee County has seen the fastest herd growth of any county in the state by far.”

Luft explained that these large herds have exactly the impact one would imagine. “There ends up being high volumes of liquid manure” he said.

The concentration of feces – human and otherwise – has profound health implications. The contaminated groundwater is filled with coliform, E. coli and nitrates, which can lead to anything from serious bacterial infections to cancer.

“It definitely has an effect on our population in their health and the health for our children,” Utesch said.

Kewaunee Cares, which is made up of residents and small farmers, has focused on putting constraints on the practices of large farms in the county. These farms house between 1,000 and 6,000 cows in a handful of sheds across just 1 to 2 acres of a larger 40 to 60-acre lot.

That leaves behind high volumes of liquid manure concentrated on a small bit of land, making it more likely for that manure to seep down through the soil and into the groundwater.

Lynn Utesch unwinds fencing to stake around the pasture on his small dairy farm in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, before allowing his cows to graze. (Photo by Chelsea Rae Ybanez/News21)

Utesch said he believes these large-scale farming practices are causing the contamination. His group continues to look at the effects of industrial agriculture, push the county to set requirements on farms for things like manure spreading and petition the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

On the other side, large farm owners point to residential septics as another source of feces, but they don’t entirely deny the role their manure plays.

Don Niles is the president of Peninsula Pride Farms, a watershed initiative in Kewaunee County made from an alliance of large farm owners. In an online mission statement, the group said it’s “committed to protecting, nurturing and sustaining our precious soil, water and air.”

“Agriculture plays a role in environmental challenges in our county,” Niles said. “We’re the major use of land, and we have the major responsibility.”

His operation uses a methane digester to treat waste from his cows. “We use things like methane digesters to create green power but also reduce the pathogens in the manure,” he said of the building-sized machine that cost him millions.

Don Niles, owner of Dairy Dreams farm in Wisconsin, stands along the center corridor in one of his barns, surrounded by hundreds of his cows. (Photo by Chelsea Rae Ybanez/News21)

Still, Utesch said measures like this fall short, and the only solution is for these farms to take responsibility for specific wells their manure contaminates.

If residents can prove a specific farm contaminated their well, there is some legal recourse available. In situations like this, the Department of Natural Resources will intervene to compel the farm to pay for a replacement water source. Or residents can lodge a civil court case against the farm.

However, pinning contamination on a specific farm is complicated.

Jesse Jerabek, an architect in Kewaunee County, doesn’t own a single cow. In the short time after the expansion of Kinnard Farms down the road from him, he said his water became contaminated. While he feels the connection is obvious, proving it is another matter.

Borchardt said that requires technique called “microbial source tracking.” He explains that this method “could link a contamination event in a well to a particular farm,” and even more specifically “could link it to a particular cow.” The process matches animal DNA found in contaminated water to DNA in the manure on a farm.

Calves are tagged at Dairy Dreams, a large-scale dairy operated by Don Niles in Kewaunee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Chelsea Rae Ybanez/News21)

But there’s a catch. To work, a farm needs to provide a manure sample, something that may go against its own interests.

Niles expressed doubts about the technique, which is used routinely by microbiologists. “Even if you found out that it was bovine, there (are) 100 plus farms in the county,” he said. “How would you necessarily know which farm it came from?”

Beyond this, Niles said he also hesitates because of the high cost of the test.

Niles said he hopes his efforts help make Kewaunee water safe down the road.

“We’re not slowing down our program. We’re speeding up,” he said. “I think it’s gonna take us a long ways.”

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