# Our Drinking Water on the News Again.



## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

Toxic chemicals in drinking water for six million Americans.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/toxic-chemicals-drinking-water-six-million-americans-171010033.html

After reading this I e-mail the city mayor about it with the hope I get an honest answer ,:gaah::dunno:


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## RevWC (Mar 28, 2011)

It is articles like this that made me put a 5 filter RO system in my house.


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

And it can happen anywhere folks, not just in cities.

Out in my rural location, about a mile and a half or so down the road, 10 or 12 homes were found to have nasties in their wells. It was from an old business years ago that just dumped crap way back off the road. It was all on the up and up by the laws at the times. They had them in ‘sealed’ barrels that were supposed to last 50 years or something. With that said the business is not liable for them, it acted according to the law at the time. The town ran water lines out there, at our expense of course. By the time they were ready to hook up homes, several more were found to be contaminated and needed to be hooked up also. You know it is going to keep spreading, that stuff just does not go away. I was a bit worried but not so much. There is a swamp between us and it and my well is quite a bit uphill from that.

This is not unique. When I was in NE PA a friend just down the road, half mile or so, had a small swamp-like area with a brownish yellow ooze in it. It was a nasty looking spot. Looked kind of like rusty alga water. The dog and I avoid the place, black labs and nasty wet places just seem to go together. Anyway, turns out it was an old dumping area for IBM in NY, some 30 miles from where the waste was generated. Laws at the time in PA approved the storage and disposal which was put it in 55-gallon metal drums and burry it. They rusted away and crap leaked out, who would have thought? He wanted to expand his business and because he now owned the land the town required him to clean it up. A bit on the impossible side as it would cost multiples of millions of dollars to do. Our beloved Government stepped in and required him to close his business, because the land constituted a public threat and was not healthy to be around. He lost access to his land, and had to relocate his business. It was listed on the ‘Superfund Cleanup’ list and last I knew, was still not dealt with. Not to worry though, any leakage flowed into the Susquehanna river and was whisked away.

I am sure these are unique instances of it. You might even have one close and not even know it. Tracing them back to find long out of business dumpers is very difficult. Even if it was not owned by a business, a landowner may have allowed crap to be dumped to make a little extra cash with his vacant land. After all, it was perfectly legal by the laws at the time.


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

You don’t have to read this part, I separated it because of that. It is about nuclear energy.

Back in the 70’s I was protesting nuclear energy production. Not because we didn’t think it was “clean energy” but because they were talking about creating a waste product that was highly toxic to life and had no plan to make it safe. Oh they had a plan all right. Put it in “sealed containers that would last a hundred years or more!” Burry it or put it in a sealed off mountain forever! Well, not actually ‘forever’ it would eventually be safe again. After its half-life. This was long before either of the above events became known to me.

Our thinking was they maybe they should come up with some way to reuse it, there still is a crapload of ‘energy’ left in ‘spent’ uranium. Or a plan to make it safe BEFORE creating it to begin with. Sounded pretty reasonable to us young folks. No, their plan was just to store it away and by the time the containers reached their lifespan, someone would come up with a plan for it. Either a way to reuse it or a way to make it safe for all life and the earth. As young and stupid as we were, that didn’t sound like much of a plan.

So here we are so many years later. No one has come up with a plan to make it safe or reuse it. Besides the military, they have a great way to reuse it and dispose of it at the same time! We have the three-mile island mishap or ‘incident’. Nothing to see here, move along. We have Chernobyl, cover it with concrete, that will fix it. We have recently ****ashima. What? That was nothing, they are moving folks back near to it already. Perfectly safe folks. They took garden hoses to spray it with to cool the cores down. Of course they never melted into the earth or spread nasties around or into the ocean. All the millions of tons of water they used are safely contained in the basements of the plants. And they had containers on-site to store any that was left. They brought in a ship to scrub it to make it perfectly safe. It’s over and done with. I’m sure they are many, many more little incidents that never made the news and are non-events.

Will we kill Mother Earth with all this and our dumping crap into the ocean? Pretty arrogant if we think we can do that. What about our disposable society and all the waste we produce? I don’t think we will do her too much harm, it may even be in her grand scheme of things! What we will do is kill off our species, and take many more with us. Maybe we are supposed to go the way of the dinosaurs! We are creating an environment for the next species. Remember, 99% of all species that did exist on earth at one time, are now extinct. Why should we think we are any different.


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

readytogo said:


> Toxic chemicals in drinking water for six million Americans.
> https://www.yahoo.com/news/toxic-chemicals-drinking-water-six-million-americans-171010033.html
> 
> After reading this I e-mail the city mayor about it with the hope I get an honest answer ,:gaah::dunno:


We don't know that the water is unsafe. The government periodically lowers the arbitrary "safe" levels for pollutants. That makes "safe" water more expensive for a lot of people. The "unsafe" water is almost always clear, has no odor, and hasn't been making anyone sick.


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