The price of water

Flint is in a crisis. The financial weakness of the declining industrial city led the state of Michigan to appoint emergency managers. Two years ago, they decided to cut costs by using water from the Flint River rather than from Detroit.

It was a disastrous mistake that will cost many, many times more money than any hoped-for savings. Flint River water is so corrosive that Ford Motor Co. stopped using it for industrial operations. It quickly rusted city water lines and caused lead to leach into the water. Residents complained of its color and foul taste. But for months, state environmental officials insisted nothing was wrong with it. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulator warned they were wrong but was ignored or discredited. By the time the problem was recognized, much harm was already done. Now the whole city is using bottled water.

A better, faster response was needed. The state dragged its feet. The EPA, instead of issuing warnings, should have seized control if the state wouldn’t. There’s blame to go around, but the residents of Flint deserve more than finger-pointing. They deserve clean water, monitoring of their children and treatment for lead poisoning. They are victims of government’s failure to do its job and want government to make amends.

Here in the Triad, a suspected carcinogen, the chemical solvent 1,4 dioxane, has been detected in the Randleman Regional Reservoir and in downstream water systems. The lake, which lies in Guilford and Randolph counties, is formed from the Deep River, which later joins with the Haw to form the Cape Fear River.

One source of this chemical, perhaps the primary source, is the Seaboard Chemical cleanup site on a tributary of the Deep River in Jamestown. Seaboard Chemical Corp. left a toxic mess before it went bankrupt in 1989. The Randleman reservoir, a joint project of Greensboro, High Point and other local governments, was in the planning stages then. It was known that 1,4 dioxane was seeping into the creek and flowing into the river and would end up in the drinking water supply. Planners gave assurances that “the solution is dilution” — that, in the massive volume of the lake, small amounts of 1,4 dioxane would not pose a health problem. That is the belief today.

We hope it’s correct. But 1,4 dioxane, commonly found in soaps, shampoos and cosmetics, hasn’t been fully studied. It isn’t regulated by the EPA, despite its designation as a “probable human carcinogen.” How much can be ingested safely isn’t known.

This is not a crisis. But the Seaboard site still isn’t cleaned up, and 1,4 dioxane hasn’t been a focus of remediation efforts, anyway. That should change after further assessment by the EPA. A lack of regulation in the past could have consequences in the future. When the subject is drinking water, government must make safety the top priority.

http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/our-opinion-the-price-of-water/article_41063061-7768-5914-949f-c1107df82efb.html