Elections have consequences... by gimleteye

It really does make you wonder how stupid we have become: The Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa hires a lobbyist in Tallahassee who works for the tobacco industry and takes offense when the point is pressed home; why would a hospital dedicated to helping cancer patients work with a lobbyist for an industry that causes cancer? A day after elections in which incumbent county commissioners are returned to office, whose votes for rock miners (ie. campaign contributors) jeopardize the drinking water for 2.2 million citizens, the USGS releases a press statement, "Water Supply at Greater Risk than Expected." (click "read more" for full text of press release)

The facts are clear: for more than a decade, Miami environmentalists fought to protect the wellfield where citizens get their drinking water, battling developers and rock miners who wanted cheap land near the Everglades. The problem: Florida's Biscayne aquifer, where our drinking water comes from, is porous as a sponge. What you put on the ground, or what you dig out of the aquifer, exposes infants, children, and adults to danger. In some cases, to substances that can cause cancer and other severe illnesses.

Government said the water supply was protected. Environmentalists, who didn't have the money to prove otherwise, clamored to stop the excavation of the drinking water aquifer so close to wellfields. Industry funded county commissioners kept getting returned to office, denying nearby homeowners whose foundations were cracked by blasting and thwarting civic involvement in permitting processes.

Natacha Seijas, who was returned to office in this week's election, supported an ordinance that severely restricts public hearings in rock mining applications. Campaign contributions from rock miners and prospective rock miners (Krome Gold) fill the pages of finance reports of incumbent county commissioners.

In 2003, although the USGS finally tested the porosity of the nearby aquifer supplying drinking water wells-- with results that made the front page news-- still development and zoning changes proceeded; the business of government conducted in secret with immense implications for public health.

The USGS is one of the science agencies that political ideologues have assaulted, turning scientists skittish as deer in the head lights. We'll never know how much damage was done to the public health in the years that the "wellfield protection zone" was protective in name only.

That's in no small part because budgets at the Florida Department of Health to track cancer cases and do thorough epidemiology have been suppressed by the Republican-led legislature.

These are not academic questions: they are life and death. If you think that the USGS was not making a statement, by releasing its alarm the day after primary elections in Florida: you are dead wrong. Your water supply is at greater risk than expected. Not "may be", not "allegedly". Not, from the fantasy of doom and gloom environmentalists.

Some of the county commissioners who allowed this to happen were just re-elected to office, supported by campaign money from polluters and resource exploiters who profit by democracy that values their interests more than yours.


U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Department of the Interior
News Release
Date: August 27, 2008

Contact: A.B. Wade, (703) 648-4483 - abwade@usgs.gov

Water Supply at Greater Risk than Expected

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey have concluded that the drinking
water from the Miami-Dade Northwest Well Field (NWWF) is at risk of
contamination due to the close proximity of existing lakes created from
limestone rock mining activities. Scientists conducted experiments to show
how chemical contaminants and pathogens would move through the Biscayne
aquifer. Approximately 2 million residents in southeastern Florida rely on the
Biscayne aquifer for drinking water.

The U.S. Geological Survey first studied the movement of groundwater in the
Biscayne aquifer in April 2003 when they injected a harmless red dye into the
limestone of the Biscayne aquifer, which was then pulled into the public water
supply system by wells at the NWWF. The results of this test revealed that
groundwater traveled through the limestone aquifer at rates much faster than
anticipated.

These studies were conducted because of the potential contamination of a
drinking water supply in areas where shallow karst limestone systems, such as
the Biscayne aquifer, are the source of drinking water. Of particular concern is
the potential movement of pathogens in the groundwater, such as
Cryptosporidium parvum, from limestone-rock mine lakes to the production
wells. Cryptosporidium parvum is commonly recognized as a pathogen of
concern because of its resistance to chemical disinfection. Cryptosporidium
has been known to survive the normal chlorination process that a drinking
water facility uses. Current treatment of water drawn from NWWF production
wells is not completely effective in removing these pathogens from the drinking
water. In other parts of the country, Cryptosporidium outbreaks have been
associated with drinking water. This organism causes severe intestinal
infections and can be a significant health concern.

Fluorescent microscopic particles were used to mimic the transport behavior of
Cryptosporidium parvum in the aquifer. They traveled through the aquifer
about three times faster than predicted. USGS research microbiologist Dr.
Ronald Harvey explained that “The fast transport of these particles, their low
removal in the aquifer and the extensive nature of the highly porous zones of
limestone suggest that chlorine-resistant, surface-water pathogens pose
potential threats to the drinking water withdrawn from the Biscayne aquifer.”

In response to the red dye test, the Miami-Dade County Department of
Environmental Resources Management and the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer
Department requested the USGS conduct additional studies that included a
complex series of tracer tests conducted in February 2004. The analyses and
results of these tests, published in three articles in the scientific journal,
Water Resources Research, show that the potential movement of chemical
contaminants and pathogens within the Biscayne aquifer can occur very
quickly, primarily through highly porous limestone. A complementary study by
USGS and university scientists provides additional insight to the broad
continuity of these highly porous flow zones. It is published in the journal
Geological Society of America Bulletin.

Robert Renken, USGS hydrologist and one of the lead investigators of the
study said, "The highly porous nature of the Biscayne aquifer presents
significant water-management implications, especially as it relates to the
inadvertent release of contaminants within or immediately outside the well field
protection area."

Tests were conducted by injecting a tracer solution into the aquifer for a
period of one hour. However, the tracer solution was still detected 160 hours
later (about one week) at the NWWF production well. “This indicates that if a
contamination event occurs in the Biscayne aquifer that continues for days,
weeks, or months it has the potential to degrade water quality and could
persist from years to decades,” said Dr. Allen Shapiro, USGS research
hydrologist involved in the study.

Public-supply wells in the Miami-Dade area are required to have a designated
distance or well-head protection zone around them to protect against
contamination. Currently, the well-field protection zones are determined by
numerical models that simulate groundwater travel-times. The tracer test
results indicate that the numerical models are based on an oversimplified
understanding of how groundwater moves through the Biscayne aquifer.
Current protection zones are not sufficient to protect water supply wells from
possible contamination from borrow-pit lakes (artificial lakes created by the
mining activities) associated with nearby rock mining activities.

The risk of contamination to groundwater increases when groundwater is
located close enough to surface water such that it receives direct surface-
water recharge. Some borrow-pit mines are located as close as 800 ft from a
municipal supply well. The Northwest Well Field is located in the Lake Belt area
where open-pit rock mining activities excavate limestone from the Biscayne
aquifer intersecting the same porous aquifer units as NWWF supply wells. The
Lake Belt area is located between high-density urban development to the east
and freshwater wetlands and water-conservation areas of the Everglades to
the west.

The tracer tests demonstrate that existing and proposed rock mines near the
NWWF in Miami-Dade County, Florida likely increase the risk of contaminating
public drinking water sources. The Miami-Dade County Department of
Environmental Resources Management and the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer
Department requested the study in response to County and public concern
that rock mining activities near the NWWF presented much greater
contamination risks than previously recognized. These findings will be used to
support future water-management and land-use decisions.

The articles published in the journal Water Resources Research can be viewed
at:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007WR006058.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007WR006059.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007WR006060.shtml

The article published in the journal The Geological Society of America Bulletin
can be viewed at:
www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1130%
2FB26392.1

Follow the path of water on a virtual 3-D tour traveling through a piece of
limestone from the Biscayne aquifer. This animation was created using CAT-
scan technology. http://sofia.usgs.gov/people/cunningham.html

USGS provides science for a changing world. For more information, visit
http://www.usgs.gov