Tom Kennedy learned about the long-term contamination of his family’s drinking water about two months after he was told that his breast cancer had metastasized to his brain and was terminal.
The troubles tainting his tap: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a broad category of chemicals invented in the mid-1900s to add desirable properties such as stain-proofing and anti-sticking to shoes, cookware and other everyday objects.
Some Hopi families don’t have running water. Many others have water tainted with arsenic. Steps toward fixes are finally taking shape.
A new survey shows arsenic levels in public water are disproportionately high in certain U.S. communities, despite national regulatory standards designed to protect people from the harmful chemical. Researchers studied approximately 13 million records from 2006 to 2011 covering 139,000 public water systems in 46 states, Washington D.C., and Native American tribes.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a draft guidance that interprets a Supreme Court decision in a way that may exempt some facilities from needing permits to pollute groundwater. In April, the court decided that a permit is required for both direct discharges of pollutants into federally-regulated rivers and oceans as well as their “functional equivalent” in groundwater that flows into regulated waters.
In the San Joaquin Valley, agricultural runoff from fertilizer and manure leaches into groundwater, contributing to some of the highest levels of nitrate pollution in community water systems in the country. Residents in Tipton were warned months ago not to drink or cook with tap water because of dangerous levels of nitrate. For two years, Estella Bravo, 78, has been advocating for her neighbors to get free bottled water.
San Diego is one step closer to federal legislation that would save taxpayers millions by essentially exempting the city from having to get a Clean Water Act waiver every five years for the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 395-4 last week in favor of legislation that supporters say is game changing. The law, the Ocean Pollution Reduction Act II, still must be approved by the U.S. Senate and then signed by President Trump.
The Bay Area’s first rain of the season is washing away worries of wildfire and drought. But it’s also bringing a new concern: gobs of face masks flooding San Francisco Bay.
Early season storms typically sweep a slurry of debris from streets and sidewalks into rivers, creeks and bays. This year, the fall flush not only contains the usual gunk, waste experts say, but a whole lot of discarded PPE — or personal protective equipment, the detritus of the pandemic.
The EPA under a future Biden administration is expected to quickly move to set regulations on “forever chemicals” in water and other areas, but not to restrict the entire group of thousands of the substances, attorneys said in recent interviews.
The Environmental Protection Agency is already expected to set national drinking water limits for two of these chemicals, perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, said Cynthia AM Stroman, a partner in King & Spalding LLP’s Washington, D.C. office.
On October 27, 2020, a California water PFAS lawsuit was filed by the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency against several companies, in which it is alleged that the companies are responsible for PFAS water contamination in southern California.
A new venture backed by billionaire Bill Gates is trying to make sure that “forever chemicals” don’t really last that long.
Allonnia LLC, which launched Thursday with $40 million in Series A funding, is working to engineer microbes to get rid of pollutants in wastewater and soil. It’s starting with PFAS, an insidious class of chemicals that are widespread in U.S. drinking water and have otherwise proved resistant to breaking down, earning them the “forever” moniker.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
