Listen to this outstanding interview by Terry Gross, Fresh Air, with NY Times journalist Charles Duhigg on the "worsening pollution in American waters" based on Duhigg's series for the Times, "Toxic Waters". (Fresh Air is aired locally by WLRN, public radio.) It is amazing/wonderful how Gross asks nearly every question I would ask about the safety of our drinking water.Because the subject is vast and time for the interview is limited, Fresh Air focuses on how toxics from electric, coal-fired power plants creeps into our aquifers and drinking water supplies. Duhigg observes what anyone who has taken the time to study Florida's water supply and water quality knows: manipulating water provided freely by nature to serve development cheaply entails looking the other way on major issues of toxics and pollution. In Miami-Dade County, for example, the wellfield protection zone serving millions of residents is "protective" in name only: an army of rock miners, downtown lawyers, lobbyists, engineers and real estate developers persuaded the county commission zoning change by zoning change-- Natacha Seijas, as ring leader-- to push regulators away from enforcement actions on Miami-Dade wellfield issues by local, state, and federal permitting agencies.
The Growth Machine should listen to the Fresh Air episode. (Please click 'read more')
The bottom line: shifting water pollution costs impose hazards and liabilities on future generations despite the presence of protective rules and regulations. The problems begin at the top: successive White House administrations pressured the US Environmental Protection Agency to limit prosecution of polluters / campaign contributors. The erosion of federal environmental laws didn't start with Bush: it began nearly as soon as the nation's major federal laws protecting the environment were passed in the mid 1970's. President Clinton is an environmentalist today, but when he was president he was determined not to let EPA regulatory authority obstruct political gain.
A clear example of this phenomenon is the "delegation" of responsibility for water quality from the federal government to the states. Florida environmentalists tried for more than a decade to bring the US Environmental Protection Agency back into the state, claiming that Florida had failed to protect the waters. At the same time, political interference by lobbyists and elected officials discouraged progress in monitoring water pollution. Local jurisdictions like Miami-Dade County can claim (and do) that they are doing everything within the limits of federal law to protect water quality. But the limits of the law are far too weak to protect the public health and environment. As Duhigg notes, our rivers may not be catching fire as they did in the 70's, but there are thousands of invisible, tasteless chemicals that make their way into our water supply without any regulation at all.
The Bush Era vision-- that industry can self-police better than regulations-- works about as well with water quality as it did with Wall Street. Don't take my word for it: listen to the Fresh Air interview.
Towards the end, Terry Gross asks the question that is on everyone's lips: what is in my tap water? You are not going to be happy with the answer, but you should be even less happy with the elected officials up and down the supply chain who are responsible. It is possible that under President Obama there will be a rejuvenation of the US Environmental Protection Agency. With all the attention focused on the health care and economic issues, it has passed largely unnoticed that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is reinvigorating an agency that has done a miserable job for a variety of reasons. On water quality, it is something of a shock to learn that the database the New York Times assembled for its investigative series is more complete than that at the nation's premier environmental agency.
If you want to learn more about clean water initiatives in Florida, click here. Locally, the group doing most on clean water drinking issues is Clean Water Action.
8 comments:
Florida's water is about to hit tipping point...FPL hopes to deep well inject all the waste that doesn't evaporate for the new reactors...something like 20 million gallons a day will be pumped underground and everyone will just hope it stays put (unlike in Orlando where waste has bubbled up from "deep weell injection")
We need an environmental ombudsman to monitor things from a public interest point of view. Just take a look at the Biscayne Landing project - it should have never been approved before the environmental clean up of the polluted landfill (former superfund site) was completed. Who was looking over DERM's shoulders when they approved the experimental clean up using sugar (which never worked). Who was looking out for future residents living next to and on top of a toxic dump? Now our water supply is threatened. Who will look after the public interest? Environmental groups can't keep doing the heavy lifting alone with lawsuits and campaigns.
The waste has bubbled up from the injection wells at Black Point already. I believe they had to shut some down. However they are not planning on injecting more waste as far as I can tell, they are planning on building a very expensive reuse plant in the South West of the county to treat wastewater to be used for the NUKES cooling.
And FPL will be lobbying to be sure that the Clean Water Act does not include any of the micro-constituents/chemicals that will be raining down over Homestead and South Florida from their evaporate.
I strongly suggest the purchase of small water distillers. I bought on about a year ago and all my families drinking water is distilled at home. It is a whole lot cheaper than buying distilled water, which we used to do. It is worth the investment to stay healthy. Mine by the way is small, it was inexpensive and works perfectly. My water is very, very pure. It is not only distilled but also filtered. My machine is called "waterwise". I received the information on it from one of my alternative Doctors.
There is a presence of amonia in two areas in the county (heard directly from a Dade County Water and Sewer person) indicating that the waste is percolating up. When they started deep well injections, they did not plan on doing it beyond 10 years, I believe. We are going on 20...right?
Any evidence of ammonia percolating up... or indication where this would be happening: please email confidentially to gimleteyemiami@yahoo.com
The containment of the nasty brown water spray that was going to bumped up out of the steam vents and then drifting down on the heads of Saga Bay people was a concern for the Enron plant that was slated for the Black Point waste water facility.
Post a Comment