America has a looming water health crisis and no one seems interested in talking about it.
Over the last year many Americans have likely heard of the lead poisoning affecting the drinking water of Flint, Michigan. We have heard the horror stories of children being sickened due to the failure of Flint’s bureaucracies and failing infrastructure. However, a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council reveals that Americans in every state are suffering because of failing infrastructure, under-reporting of violations, and lax enforcement of drinking water standards. The NRDC is an environmental advocacy group based in New York City.
The report, “Threats on Tap: Widespread Violations Highlight Need for Investment in Water Infrastructure and Protections,” found close to 80,000 violations of drinking water standards in every state in the U.S. “Very small systems found in rural or sparsely populated areas account for more than half of all health-based violations, and nearly 70 percent of all violations,” the NRDC writes.
Rural towns with smaller water systems are often unable to cover the financial and technological burden required to upgrade infrastructure which could reduce the amount of contaminants in the water.
The report concludes that nearly one in four Americans receive their drinking water from systems which fail to meet federal health standards. This failure is exacerbated by a lack of reporting these violations, as well as a lack of enforcement when violations are reported. The council’s report indicates that water contamination is not exclusive to Flint, but rather, Flint is representative of a national water crisis.
“America is facing a nationwide drinking water crisis that goes well beyond lead contamination,” said Erik Olson, Health Program Director at NRDC and a report co-author. “The problem is two-fold: there’s no cop on the beat enforcing our drinking water laws, and we’re living on borrowed time with our ancient, deteriorating water infrastructure. We take it for granted that when we turn on our kitchen tap, the water will be safe and healthy, but we have a long way to go before that is reality across our country.”
Of all the states with health-based violations, Texas comes in at number one, followed by Puerto Rico, Ohio, Maryland, and Kentucky. The authors believe the problem will only get worse under the Trump administration amid calls for cutting the budget of the EPA.
The council analyzed data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This data found some 27 million people are using water-distribution systems which are responsible for around 12,000 health-based violations. These violations involve amounts of contaminants in the water supply well above federal health and safety standards. The contaminants include lead, nitrates, and pesticides.
The NRDC report comes on the heels of a multi-part investigation published by USA Today in March of this year. The investigation found almost 2,000 water systems in all 50 states with excessive levels of lead contamination. “The water systems, which reported lead levels exceeding Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] standards, collectively supply water to 6 million people,” according to reporters Alison Young and Mark Nichols.
The full impact of these reports can be understood when compared to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, “Association of Childhood Blood Lead Levels With Cognitive Function and Socioeconomic Status at Age 38 Years and With IQ Change and Socioeconomic Mobility Between Childhood and Adulthood,” concluded that children with elevated levels of lead in their blood at age 11 were likely to grow into adults with lower cognitive function and lower-status jobs than their parents. The researchers followed around 1,000 children born in Dunedin, New Zealand in the early 1970s. The children who tested positive for lead in 1983 were more likely to have lower IQs and lower socioeconomic status three decades later. The researchers accounted for the children’s IQs, their mothers’ IQs and their social-economic background and still found the negative associations.
Despite these studies and a fairly obvious crisis at hand, the average American seems to be completely ignorant to the issue. A quick search regarding the NRDC shows only one article from The New York Times. Why is there an absence of reporting on an issue so vital which obviously affects all Americans? Mae Wu, a senior attorney with the council’s health program, told the Times the data is “not sexy,” making it difficult to motivate lawmakers to fund new infrastructure and improve drinking water standards.
Whether the data is sexy or not, this is one issue that should be on the forefront of every single person’s mind. Without clean water we die. Water literally is life. Let’s do our work to spread this information and call for improved drinking water.
Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the Lead Investigative Reporter for ActivistPost.com and the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him on Twitter. Derrick is the author of three books: The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 1 and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 2
Derrick is available for interviews. Please contact [email protected]
This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link.
Image Credit: The Free Thought Project
Because they are protected by the lying American government… or so they have been led to believe…
Always be a light that is shininginthedark
So, there really is something in the water making us stupid and lazy.
yea, been there for years, decades really
Why is the so called “Alternative Media” asking rhetorical questions.
MSM cannot ignore or report on anything. That is not their capacity anymore.
They are readers and repeaters. A script is issued and they follow.
This article in itself is an attempt to give legitimacy to MSM.
There is none, and I question the alt media for playing along.
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.
I recommend a good gravity fed filter.
The water board should send out reports a couple times a year.
Fluoride should be banned from all public drinking water.
Take chlorella to draw it out.
“Why Is The Media Ignoring America’s Drinking Water Crisis?”
Because the crisis is being perpetrated by demonrats running the cities. Whatever money they have has been given to unions and local govt employees for their support, and the taxpaying citizen has been forgotten as usual.
But we should NEVER bail out these cities. Let the people drown in these cesspools until they stop voting for demonrats.
“Because the crisis is being perpetrated by demonrats running the cities.”
What an ignorant response. IN REALITY one of the Republican Party’s top priorities is reducing taxes on the wealthy. To accomplish this, they try to slash as much government spending as possible.
This includes slashing funding for water infrastructure and for the Environmental Protection Agency. The problem comes from the Republicans that you apparently worship.
Look at both parties, and try looking past them.
For goodness sake, draw the obvious correlation! Polluted drinking water is directly associated with the profits generated by American industry. When your god is money, the devil also gets his due. Industry does not need to pollute and the EPA should not have to babysit it. Industry standards are too low and have missed the mark for decades. Fines for breaking the current low standards are not sufficient to stop such egregious activity. Prison sentences for destroying the environment for profit are necessary!
Never happen under this admin.
Or, any other?
Back in the ’60’s I worked for a rig called “Price Battery” in Hamburg, Pennsylvania. They made lead-acid batteries. Years later I learned the company went belly-up and left behind what turned into a ‘super-fund’ site. The business was purchased by another company that wound up in litigation to assess some kind of responsibility. Also learned that Rite-Aid has a water purifying and bottling plant in Hamburg. I should think that wantonly poisoning the environment knowing profit can be made through purifying, bottling and selling it isn’t part of the hidden agenda of capitalists behind the recent hard-push for de-regulation. Or is it?
Also, it’s the nature of these people. They will form a front company that may be around for a small time, or a large time, once the resoure is gone or not profitable, the sham company is allowed to go ‘belly-up’ leaving no one criminally responsible for the purposeful contamination, and you can’t sue a no longer existent fiction known as a corporation. Just another trick the elites use, they control the government, so they never get prosecuted or have expose stories in the MSM about them, nice tight little scam.
The MSM will concern themselves with drinking water right after they impeach Trump.
Ideology above all things.
The Government cannot afford to talk about Drinking Water. They probably won’t want to discuss any Water. Water is Key to Survival. In California, Survival is getting pretty difficult due to Desertification. People will move away and expect Water to be available somewhere else. Nobody in their right mind would want to move to a Water less area. Or contaminated. Government is silent about Home Issues other than Homeland Security and Terrorists. Trump is bumbling around like a Busy Bee, playing Diplomat instead of visiting Americans and listening to their Woes.
There is a g-l-o-b-a-l shortage of drinking water! We need to realize this planet has f-i-n-i-t-e resources! Time to stop bringing a bunch of kids into this world! In Europe some countries have only one child born per woman. In the Muslim world it is eight children per woman b/c Islam prohibits the use of contraceptives, the use of it is supposedly against God. Angola has prohibited Islam and closed down all Mosques. Maybe more countries should do the same. (I am not religious.)
Lifestyle is far more important than numbers.
People are inherently wasteful in the West, in the case of water that is one thing that they have above us, I have worked with a Muslim Canadian security guard who gave me a lecture for running tap water for longer than I needed to.
It’s planned.
In the mid-nineties CNN ran pieces entitled “water wars” about the fact that California was in an area that experienced drought periodically.
Up here in British Columbia the provincial government has been forcing through a hydroelectric project called “Site C” that will flood the land with the best undeveloped agricultural potential in the province, when the numbers show that we do not need the power generation capacity.
The reservoir for that dam is located exactly where the supposedly defunct North American Water and Power Sharing Agreement (NAWAPA) would ideally have the start of a pipeline for water to points south.
By allowing local water security in the South and food security in the North to be disrupted and dependent upon transport, the interests in charge of the infrastructure achieve functional dominance over the public.
The US needs to start working on tight water conservation and environmental custodianship policies NOW.