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Advocacy Group Finds Traces Contamination In Many Regional Water Systems

Tap water delivered by more than 2,000 water systems across the Ohio Valley contain pollutants, many harmful to human health, even though they mostly meet federal drinking water standards. That’s according to a newly-updated database released by the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization.

Millions of residents in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia are being exposed to small amounts of chemicals and contaminants, including those linked to cancer, the group found.

“Just because your drinking water has passed federal standards or it gets a passing grade, it still might pose risks to your health,” said Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist with EWG.

The 2019 Tap Water Database draws upon water quality data collected by utilities nationwide. The directory was first published in 2005 and has been updated multiple times. The latest update, published Wednesday, includes new data from 2016 and 2017 and analyzed data collected since 2012.

Chemicals linked to cancer, including hexavalent chromium, total trihalomethanes and nitrate, were found in the water of millions of people in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia at levels the advocacy group argues could be of concern.

While just a handful of pollutants at a handful of water systems were identified at levels above standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Stoiber argues federal regulations over drinking water are largely outdated. The last tap water standard was set almost two decades ago.

“A lot of them may be outdated or based on not the most current science, so they might not be protective enough of our health,” she said. “Some of them haven’t been updated for decades or they may have been based on analytical detection methods that are now outdated.”

Greg Kail, directs communications for the American Water Works Association, a nonprofit, scientific and educational association, whose members include water utilities, water treatment technology companies and academics. He said many of AWWA’s members share the EWG’s concerns over the safety of drinking water.

But he said drinking water safety is largely dictated by laws including the Safe Drinking Water Act, a federal law that protects the quality of drinking water in the U.S. As science has improved, water utilities are detecting more pollutants, but finding something in tap water doesn’t always mean it threatens human health over the course of a lifetime.

“It’s important to always strive, and as we understand research, to make sure standards are protective of public health,” he said. “The reality is in order to have a scientific process, we need to understand human health impacts, where contaminants occur and at what levels.”

Two of the most commonly found contaminants in the Ohio Valley — hexavalent chromium and nitrate — are often found when water utilities use surface water as their source for drinking water, Stoiber said.

“If there’s natural organic matter, which could be things like leaves or algae or other decaying, natural things, that can combine with the disinfectants and make chemicals that can harm your health,” she said.

In addition to being byproducts of the water disinfectant process, Stoiber said nitrate is also naturally-occuring and can enter source water from agricultural runoff. Hexavalent chromium, she said, can also enter source water naturally or by releases from industrial plants. Both chemicals can increase one’s risk for cancer.

Both hexavalent chromium and nitrate can be removed from drinking water by installing a carbon water filter at home, Stoiber said.

EWG also assessed the worst-offending water systems using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online, or ECHO, database. To rank the top offenders, the group also factored in violations by utilities of the Safe Drinking Water Act and the amount of time it took to correct violations.

Across the Ohio Valley, small water systems, many serving a few thousand, and in some cases just a few dozen people, were the top violators.

In Ohio, six contaminants exceeded EWG’s health guidelines at the Byesville Water Department, which serves 4,615 people. None of the contaminants identified by the data exceeded federal standards, although only one pollutant has a set federal guideline.

The utility spent two quarters over the last three years in significant violation of federal drinking water standards. A request for comment was not immediately returned.

In West Virginia, the top seven water systems with the most violation points, according to EWG, all serve fewer than 500 people.

In Kentucky, the Pikeville Water Department topped the EWG list. Four contaminants — arsenic, nitrate, radium 226/228 and total trihalomethanes — exceeded EWG’s health guidelines, although not federal standards.

A representative from the City of Pikeville did not respond to a request for comment.

The database also showed that over the last three years the water utility has spent in significant violation of federal drinking water standards.

Of the more than 2,000 public water systems in the Ohio Valley, 12 percent are either considered “serious violators” or have had faced formal enforcement actions within the last 5 years, according to the ReSource’s analysis of the EPA ECHO database.

EPA defines “serious violations” as public water systems with “unresolved serious, multiple, and/or continuing violations.”

Across the region, the struggles of small rural water systems — many built by coal companies in the early 1900s — are well documented. As jobs leave those communities, water operators struggle to pay for costly upgrades. For some communities, boil advisories have been in place for years.

In Martin County, Kentucky, many residents say water from the tap is often undrinkable. But residents have the eighth highest average water bill out of the 141 districts regulated by the state’s Public Service Commission, according to a report published last month.

“Rural systems are going to face challenges of economies of scale,” Stoiber said. “We know that they aren’t going to have the resources or the budget to deal with a lot of tap water issues that a larger utility is going to have.”

An analysis published last month by three environmental groups found more than half of West Virginia counties rank among the worst in the nation for violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Systems nationwide serving less than 3,300 people accounted for more than 80 percent of all Safe Drinking Water Act violations, according to the study. Even smaller systems, serving less than 500 people, were reportedly responsible for more than 60 percent of all SDWA violations, and for 50 percent of health-based violations.

How Protecting Civil War Battlefields Helps Protect Drinking Water

After the 2014 Elk River chemical spill in the Kanawha Valley, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition created the Safe Water WV initiative. The idea is simple: to strengthen a community’s connection to their drinking water and encourage them to work together to better protect it.

A couple years ago, Jefferson and Berkeley Counties decided to build off that initiative in a unique way – using the conservation of farmland and Civil War battlefields as a model for drinking water protection.

About two miles from the heart of Shepherdstown is the site of the bloodiest battle in West Virginia during the American Civil War. More than 600 Union and Confederate soldiers died in a two-day battle in September 1862.

The Battle of Shepherdstown may have been small in comparison to other battles of the Civil War, but historians agree, the battle not only halted the Confederates’ northern invasion, but it also opened the door for President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Since 2011, the site of the Battle of Shepherdstown has been a protected historic landmark. The battle site also happens to be at a unique location – along the Potomac River. The Potomac provides drinking water to Shepherdstown residents, and other nearby areas.

“The Landmarks Commission owns about a half-mile of the Potomac River frontage,” Martin Burke said.

This map shows details of the attacks and soldier divisions during the Battle of Shepherdstown. A marker for the cement mill can be seen along the Potomac River.

Burke is the chairman of the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission – the group responsible for protecting the site of the Battle of Shepherdstown.

“Controlling the runoff, planting trees, all helps improve water quality.”

That’s why his group, along with the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board, the Berkeley County Farmland Protection Board, and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition decided two years ago to work together. They started an initiative called the Safe Water Conservation Collaborative in the Eastern Panhandle.

“We formed the Safe Water Conservation Collaborative to bring together, for the very first time, water utilities, land conservation organizations, and watershed groups to take a collaborative approach to protecting drinking water using the conservation of land, and protecting land forever, to protect our drinking water sources,” Tanner Haid said.

Haid is the Eastern Panhandle Field Coordinator for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

The initiative focuses on using land conservation easements to protect drinking water. A conservation easement is a voluntary private or government contract with a landowner to protect land for ecological reasons – to improve water quality, maintain a historic site, or protect wildlife.

Haid said this approach makes drinking water protections stronger, because land conservation easements help to prevent potential contamination threats or development that could impact a source water intake.

In Jefferson County alone, there are more than 16,000 acres of battlefield land that have been identified, according to the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission. Only 861 acres of that is currently protected.

Liz Wheeler is the Director of the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board. Her organization administers conservation easements to protect historic farmland and battlefields in Jefferson County.

“When we protect land, we’re not just protecting cropland. We’re protecting woodland, we’re protecting streams, we’re protecting historic resources, so it fits into what we do; to be able to contribute to source water protection,” Wheeler said.

But the Safe Water Conservation Collaborative in the Eastern Panhandle doesn’t come without its challenges. Finding enough money to protect the land can be the biggest challenge, but so can educating landowners about their options if they qualify for a conservation easement or historic status.

Haid said, in the coming year, he and his team hope to identify and prioritize areas of land in the Eastern Panhandle not currently protected that are close to drinking water areas.

“And then in particular, closest to the water intake or the utilities who draw up the water, because those are the areas most threatened by development and actions that we take on our land that has an impact on our water quality,” Haid said.

Jefferson and Berkeley Counties are among the most successful in the state for land conservation, according to West Virginia Rivers. Together, these counties have protected more than 10,000 acres of land.

West Virginia Rivers said, so far, they haven’t collected data on how water quality has improved through the Safe Water Conservation Collaborative in the Eastern Panhandle, but over the past two years, they have signed up 30 partner organizations interested in the project.

The group hopes this model – to protect water by conserving land – isn’t just for the Eastern Panhandle but could be used across the state.

Martinsburg Sues Feds Over 2016 Water Contamination

The City of Martinsburg has sued the federal government over alleged chemical contamination of a drinking water plant.

Martinsburg attorney Kin Sayre filed the claim this month, requesting the Air National Guard pay for damages caused by high levels of two chemicals that the city said seeped into the water supply at the Big Springs water filtration plant in Martinsburg in 2016.

The chemicals — PFOA and PFOS — are found in a firefighting foam used by the Air National Guard. A base, the 167th Airlift Wing, is located in Berkeley County.

Steve Knipe, the utilities director for the City of Martinsburg, said the city acted quickly two years ago when a federal water quality report made them aware of the contamination.

“Martinsburg was proactive about jumping in and taking that source of supply off line while we were designing treatment systems for removing it,” he said.

The incident affected the southern and western parts of Martinsburg, but it’s hard to say exactly how many customers were affected because of the city’s grid system, Knipe said. There are 6,000 customers in Martinsburg, but not all were affected by the contamination, he said.

The city’s water was switched over to the Kilmer Springs Water Filtration Plant, a back up to Big Springs. In December 2017, the Big Springs plant was turned back on after tests showed the new system was effective.

Knipe said Martinsburg paid $4.5 million with the city’s water and sewer savings accounts for research and to install eight granulated, activated carbon systems — its main material made out of coconut shells — to filter out the chemical in the Big Springs Plant.

“The biggest cost ongoing, from here on out is going to be carbon replacement,” Knipe noted, “and that’s actually going to be dependent on the concentration of the contaminant.”

Knipe says each unit may need replaced every year.

The Martinsburg water plant is one of hundreds across the country possibly contaminated by PFOS as a result of firefighting foams, potentially costing billions in cleanup.

The Air National Guard promised to pay back Martinsburg for the carbon systems and other damages.

Knipe said the city hasn’t received it.

***Editor’s Note: The headline and body of this story were adjusted for clarification.

Water Filtration System in West Virginia Among the Elite

A raft of garbage covers a swath of the Monongahela River in northern West Virginia, a dozen miles upstream from the drinking water intake for 100,000 people.

Old tires, damaged toys, algae, oil drums, sticks and other refuse have crowded against the dam for so long that weeds sprout from them. Stuck against the spillway, the trash spans a football field’s length from one bank to the other and spreads almost 30 yards upstream.

But the filth is no match for the Robert B. Creel Water Treatment Facility in Morgantown. The publicly owned plant routinely turns the dirty water into drinking water that far exceeds federal and state health standards, an approach that sets it apart from most systems in the U.S., according to the American Water Works Association. In addition to being safe, it won the association’s award for best-tasting West Virginia water in 2016.

It’s not cheap. The raw water from the Monongahela is treated in a system that was upgraded four years ago with a $40 million municipal bond. The project increased production capacity in Morgantown, the home of West Virginia University and one of the few areas in the state that’s been growing and water demand is projected to keep rising.

About 150 miles away is Charleston, where in 2014 a leaking chemical tank left about 300,000 people without water for roughly nine days. Even if a spill like that happened near Morgantown, its elite system wouldn’t have been able to filter out the chemical that spilled into the Elk River and fouled Charleston’s drinking water. But it does have sensors upstream that may have detected that something was amiss when the chemical leak started and could’ve closed its intake earlier, perhaps preventing people from losing their drinking water for days.

“From a health standpoint, Morgantown is going to be way better off than most utilities,” said Rob Renner, of the Water Research Foundation in Denver. “These membranes take more of the risk out.”

Renner is talking about membranes with microscopic openings that block most pathogens at the Morgantown facility.

That doesn’t mean the water elsewhere is unsafe to drink. It just has less assurance that it’s been properly filtered, so the risk that it contains contaminants is higher. Private utilities are reluctant to upgrade their systems the same way because of cost and regulations don’t require it. Morgantown was different because it’s publicly owned, and when its system needed to upgrade, engineers thought about safety and then the bottom line.

“I wish that would take hold in other places,” said Angie Rosser, of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “They’re showing their customers they are going above and beyond and instilling that confidence that we haven’t regained in Charleston.”

The disaster in Charleston spurred many utilities into action as they realized they couldn’t take clean drinking water for granted. West Virginia American Water in Charleston said it continued upgrading its source water monitoring and analysis last year and will add storage tanks and replace water mains in $29 million of system upgrades this year. It uses gravel, sand and charcoal filters.

The Morgantown board in December 2015 was the first system in West Virginia to publish its source water protection plan, required by state law after the Charleston spill, listing more than 16,000 potential sources of significant contaminants, including nearly 12,000 above ground storage tanks, about 2,000 abandoned mine lands and about 1,200 Marcellus Shale natural gas wells.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act and 19 major regulations since the 1970s, drinking water systems have spent about $5 billion on upgrades to comply, Renner said. If every surface water treatment plant in the U.S. were to add membrane filtration like the one Morgantown has, it would probably cost billions of dollars, he said.

West Virginia’s Bureau of Public Health requires all the water systems for more than 1.5 million customers to test for many contaminants. The bureau issued almost 5,000 violation letters last year, though none to Morgantown. The bureau also sent out 26 permit suspension warning letters, with 11 permits temporarily suspended.

Patrick Murphy, environmental engineering director for the state, said 33 administrative orders setting timelines for fixing multiple violations were issued last year, representing 3 percent of the systems. “Generally the systems in West Virginia are doing well,” he said.

But the challenges from pollution are significant.

The Monongahela, which empties into the Ohio River at Pittsburgh, is on the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s list of “impaired” waterways. Garbage is a minor culprit. The leading polluter is fecal coliform, mostly from human waste. Next is iron, often from mining. Most lakes and many smaller streams lack enough data to tell if they’re impaired.

Engineers at the Morgantown treatment plant face mine drainage, bacteria, sewage, fertilizer, chemicals and other waste and pollution in the Monongahela.

After the waste enters quarter-inch intake screens tilted slightly downstream, the river water is pumped into sediment settling tanks, then through six levels of gravel and sand filters and then through the membranes. Chlorine, lime, carbon, alum and potassium permanganate are added to help purify the water, but closely monitored to try to limit the minute chemical byproducts of disinfection, some considered carcinogens.

Control room operators constantly monitor 2,000 data points by computers with alarms if they exceed normal parameters, treatment and production manager Greg Shellito said. They sample water throughout the system, and in his 30 years, have never had to issue a boil notice, he said.

“In this industry you have to be 100 percent correct 100 percent of the time,” plant manager Mike Anderson said. “What you do in this business is public health.”

Thousands Without Water After Nearly $894,000 in Unpaid Bills

Water service has been turned off for more than 1,000 homes as the Huntington Sanitary Board has sent thousands of shut-off requests to West Virginia American Water as it pursues customers more than 30 days late on paying their sewer bill.

The Herald-Dispatch reports city communications director Bryan Chambers says the water company has acted on 1,252 of the nearly 4,000 requests sent since April and that 1,055 were sent June 28.

According to the city, the board has more than 22,000 accounts and those that are two months past due total nearly $894,000.

Board director Wes Leek says members approved a measure stationing an off-duty police officer at its office as customers have threatened service representatives, in addition to spitting at and punching the bulletproof glass they sit behind.

House Approves Water Standards Bill

The House voted on a bill Wednesday that aligns West Virginia’s standards for some discharges into the state’s waters with federal limits. Opponents say the bill could put West Virginia’s drinking water supply at risk, but supporters maintain it has the potential to attract new industry to the state.

House Bill 2506 is a complicated and technical bill. But in a nutshell, it relates to how much of a substance can be released into West Virginia’s waterways under state permits and the places where those permits overlap. Essentially, it allows an increased discharge limit of cancer-causing and non-cancer causing chemicals into West Virginia’s streams and rivers, but only after certain calculations and observations have been made by the state Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP would decide if a new facility that planned to apply for a discharge permit could be built in an area close to other, already-permitted facilities.

Those against the bill say it would lower the quality of the state’s drinking water and be harmful to citizens. Supporters of the bill argue it would bring more jobs to the state, because organizations could build more facilities on vacant industrial properties.

Delegate Roger Hanshaw of Clay County, is the vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He explained the bill to members of the chamber.

“The bill does not permit facilities to do anything that is out of compliance with the law,” Hanshaw said, “The bill does not allow facilities to discharge materials that aren’t authorized today. The bill doesn’t allow individuals, or entities, or permit holders to discharge anything above and beyond the existing West Virginia Water Quality Standards. The bill has no relation whatsoever to catastrophic incidents.”

One of those catastrophic incidents Hanshaw was referring to was the January 9, 2014, Freedom Industry chemical leak in the Kanawha Valley. Hanshaw pointed out that the event was an accident at a facility that was not permitted to discharge into the Elk River outside of Charleston and the bill would not change that.

Democratic Del. Barbara Evans Fleischauer disagreed with Hanshaw’s assessment.

“Those of us who were in the legislature and the 300,000 other people who lost their water for up to a month, what? It has nothing to do with that? It has everything to do with that, because we know how precious our drinking water is. We know it, it’s been proven. I do not want us to be guinea pigs on lowering the water measuring measurements, so that we have the potential for more contamination,” Fleischauer said.

Delegate Mark Zatezelo is a Republican from Hancock County and the lead sponsor of the bill. He noted in his floor speech that he wasn’t sure how many jobs it would attract, but the potential was there.

“We’re in competition. We need tax base. We need to do things that we haven’t done for a while. It’s gonna be a very difficult job. It’s gonna be a lot of hard work, and we all need to be engaged,” Zatezelo explained, “This is just a small thing, but it’s an important thing, and I do not, if I believed that it was gonna harm the water quality of West Virginia, I would be against it. I think this is a good bill, and I think it is the way for us to go.”

Democratic Delegate Mike Pushkin of Kanawha County, suggested there were other opportunities for the state to attract businesses.

“I, for one, think it’s time that we just stop believing this tired old lie that the only thing we’re good enough for here in West Virginia; the only kind of jobs we can attract in West Virginia, the only kind of economic development that we can have in West Virginia, the only kind of growth that we deserve here will be at the expense of our citizen’s health, will be at the expense of our citizen’s safety, at the expense of something as essential as the water that’s flowing from their tap,” Pushkin

Pushkin encouraged his fellow lawmakers to look for ways to use the state’s waterways as an economic driver by way of tourism.

Another Democrat, Delegate Shawn Fluharty, from Ohio County, opposed the bill.

“Here’s what we’ve been sold for decades, decades after decades;” Fluharty said, “it doesn’t matter who’s in power, Republican, Democratic whatsoever; we’ve been told just trust us. Just trust us. We don’t need coal mine safety, then a tragedy happens. Just trust us. We don’t need workers’ rights, then a tragedy happens. And then on this bill today, we’ve been told just trust us, the water’ll remain clean and the jobs will come raining down.”

In his closing remarks, Delegate Hanshaw encouraged lawmakers to separate fact from fiction.

“The most important thing in the practice of science is to divorce it from emotion,” Hanshaw said, “because when we let emotion creep in to any decision, we cloud our judgement, and we ignore facts. Beware the shoehorn. Mr. Speaker, this bill doesn’t change water quality standards. This bill gives DEP the ability to do what it’s doing now in conformity with the law, and it makes West Virginia compatible with neighboring states.”

House Bill 2506 passed, 63 to 37, and now goes to the Senate for consideration.