Tag Archives: EPA

Clean Water Act’s Restrictions Put Your Health In Danger

Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.

The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials

About 117 million Americans get their drinking water from sources fed by waters that are vulnerable to exclusion from the Clean Water Act, according to E.P.A. reports but midlevel E.P.A. officials said that internal studies indicated that as many as 45 percent of major polluters might be either outside regulatory reach or in areas where proving jurisdiction is overwhelmingly difficult

Cannon Air Force Base near Clovis, N.M., for instance, recently informed E.P.A. officials that it no longer considered itself subject to the act. It dumps wastewater — containing bacteria and human sewage — into a lake on the base.

More than 200 oil spill cases were delayed as of 2008, according to a memorandum written by an E.P.A. official and collected by Congressional investigators. And even as the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act has steadily increased each year, E.P.A. judicial actions against major polluters have fallen by almost half since the Supreme Court rulings, according to an analysis of E.P.A. data by The New York Times.

The Clean Water Act does not directly deal with drinking water. Rather, it was meant to regulate the polluters that contaminated the waterways that supplied many towns and cities with tap water.

The two Supreme Court decisions at issue — Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers in 2001 and Rapanos v. United States in 2006 — focused on the federal government’s jurisdiction over various wetlands. In both cases, dissenting justices warned that limiting the power of the federal government would weaken its ability to combat water pollution.

In 2007, for instance, after a pipe manufacturer in Alabama, a division of McWane Inc., was convicted and fined millions of dollars for dumping oil, lead, zinc and other chemicals into a large creek, an appellate court overturned that conviction and fine, ruling that the Supreme Court precedent exempted the waterway from the Clean Water Act. The company eventually settled by agreeing to pay a smaller amount and submit to probation.

Via: New York Times

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California Shuts Down Wastewater Injection Wells Over Water Contamination Fears

There are many environmental concerns connected to the proliferation of domestic gas and oil drilling. One specific concern is the spread of chemicals used in the drilling process into drinking water aquifers.

California has taken notice and shut down the activities of gas and oil companies aquifers in Central Valley over fears that they may have contaminated aquifers with fracking fluids and other toxic waste from drilling operations. The state’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources earlier this month ordered seven energy companies to stop injecting wastewater in certain wells, claiming that the practice “poses danger to life, health, property, and natural resources.”

ProPublica has the full scoop:

The problem is that at least 100 of the state’s aquifers were presumed to be useless for drinking and farming because the water was either of poor quality, or too deep underground to easily access. Years ago, the state exempted them from environmental protection and allowed the oil and gas industry to intentionally pollute them. But not all aquifers are exempted, and the system amounts to a patchwork of protected and unprotected water resources deep underground. Now, according to the cease and desist orders issued by the state, it appears that at least seven injection wells are likely pumping waste into fresh water aquifers protected by the law, and not other aquifers sacrificed by the state long ago.

“The aquifers in question with respect to the orders that have been issued are not exempt,” said Ed Wilson, a spokesperson for the California Department of Conservation in an email.

A 2012 ProPublica investigation of more than 700,000 injection wells across the country found that wells were often poorly regulated and experienced high rates of failure, outcomes that were likely polluting underground water supplies that are supposed to be protected by federal law. That investigation also disclosed a little-known program overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that exempted more than 1,000 other drinking water aquifers from any sort of pollution protection at all, many of them in California.

Those are the aquifers at issue today. The exempted aquifers, according to documents the state filed with the U.S. EPA in 1981 and obtained by ProPublica, were poorly defined and ambiguously outlined. They were often identified by hand-drawn lines on a map, making it difficult to know today exactly which bodies of water were supposed to be protected, and by which aspects of the governing laws. Those exemptions and documents were signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown, who also was governor in 1981.

State officials emphasized to ProPublica that they will now order water testing and monitoring at the injection well sites in question. To date, they said, they have not yet found any of the more regulated aquifers to have been contaminated.

We at Evolution Healthworks understand that there’s a growing problem with water contamination across the country. Check out our solutions to ensure you and your loved ones are getting the healthiest water.

Pharmaceuticals In Our Drinking Water: Where Do They Come From and What Are The Effects?

According to a study released by the Mayo Clinic earlier this year, nearly 70 percent of Americans take some sort of prescription drug. This is up from 48 percent just a few years ago in 2007-2008. As it turns out, the increased popularity of prescription drugs is having an effect on our nation’s water quality.

How do pharmaceutical drugs get in our drinking water?

Pharmaceutical drugs get into our drinking water in three main ways. Many people flush their old and unused pharmaceuticals down their toilets and sinks, which allows the drugs to end up in our water supplies. In addition, trace amounts of pharmaceuticals end up in our urine, which adds the drugs to wastewater and eventually back to our water supplies. Another way in which we can get these pharmaceuticals back into our systems, is fish and other sea creatures absorbing them, and then humans eating them.

Are pharmaceutical drugs monitored in our drinking water?

There are currently no regulations that require water treatment plants to test for or monitor the levels of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water. We do know, however, that these drugs are making it past our treatment plants and into the water in our homes.

According to a study published by the EPA, more than half of the nation’s water supplies that were sampled tested positive for oxycodone, high-blood pressure medications, over-the-counter drugs (Tylenol, Ibuprofen, etc.) and more.

What are the health effects of consuming pharmaceuticals in drinking water?

It is currently unclear how pharmaceuticals in drinking water affect our health. However, it is a growing concern among scientists and health officials. What we do know is that hormones work at very low concentrations in the human body, which suggests that the drugs can affect our bodies even though they show up in low concentrations in our water. In addition, the increase of pharmaceuticals in water has been affecting the hormones and reproductive process of the fish in our water supplies.

If you’re concerned about the health effects of pharmaceuticals in your water, your best defense is to install a EVOLUTION WHOLE HOME SYSTEM or a A URA ALKALINE WATER FILTER. Both of these residential water treatment systems will remove the traces of pharmaceuticals from the water you consume in your home.