Drinking Water

Government officials have now confirmed what they strongly suspected a year ago: The radioactive iodine-131 in some of the region's waterways, also found in minute amounts in Philadelphia's drinking water, is coming from thyroid patients. After patients swallow the chemical in capsule or liquid form, some of it passes into their urine, which then enters the wastewater-treatment system and winds up in rivers that provide drinking water, the officials said. Philadelphia's water is safe, according to officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Philadelphia Water Department, and the city Department of Health.

The Philadelphia School District has begun providing bottled water to 70 schools that have yet to be tested for lead in their drinking water. "We've done this to allay people's concerns," said Barbara Farley, a district spokeswoman. The drinking-water taps have been shut off in those buildings and will stay off until they are determined to be safe through testing, she said. Last year, the school district signed an agreement with the city Health Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to begin testing for lead in water in all 295 district buildings.

A farmer asked the Moorestown Township Council last night to help speed testing for hazardous chemical pollution in the groundwater on his property and other land in the eastern section of the township. "This is possibly affecting the drinking water of people in this area who are not on the municipal water system," asked farmer Greg Leonberg. "I would ask the township to help us in any way you can. Engineers for the General Electric Corp. this month asked Leonberg for permission to run tests on his 36-acre farm to determine how far chemicals have spread from underground leaks at GE's Government Electronic Systems Division on Borton Landing Road.

Every Monday morning, Laura Zalar and Ruby Burkett take a couple of gallon jugs of Clorox and hike about a mile to a small cinderblock bunker in the Cambria County woods. There they pour half a jug into a plastic 30-gallon tub and mix it with water. The solution runs out of a tube and slowly drips into the pipe that carries water from a pond in the woods to Onnalinda's 18 homes. And that is how this weathered, played-out coal hamlet disinfects its drinking water. "It's about the best we can do. . . . It seems to work all right," Zalar said.

On a dirt road hugging Long Creek, a man with knotted red hair and a mouth of few teeth lives on $112 a month in food stamps and the money he can raise peeling bark off sumac trees and selling it for 65 cents a pound. A thin man, wide as a needle, he lifts his shirt and shows a knot the size of a marble poking from his flat white belly. He has no medical insurance and can't afford a doctor. He says he just watches the lump get bigger. He turns and slogs through the brush toward his trailer, passing an outhouse and two junked pick-ups.

More than the drinking water has become poisonous in Susquehanna County. In a sharp rebuke of one of the state's biggest Marcellus Shale gas drillers, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection on Thursday ordered an $11.8 million pipeline built to deliver water to 18 rural residences in Dimock Township whose household wells are contaminated by natural gas. In response, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., the Texas driller whose wells the state blames for the pollution, denounced the decision as "unfounded, irrational, and capricious" and accused DEP Secretary John Hanger of "obvious political pandering.

Scientists are finding traces of drugs, herbicides and fragrances - even birth-control hormones and weed killers - in the nation's drinking water. Where once experts thought the water-filtration process would eliminate the chemicals, new studies, including surveys in Philadelphia and New Jersey, have discovered otherwise. One water industry investigation into 18 drinking-water plants nationwide found the compounds in 14 of them. "Initially it was a surprise," said Joseph Bella, executive director for the Passaic Valley Water Commission, whose plant was the basis of the New Jersey study.

Even modern American cities like Philadelphia are vulnerable to microscopic killers in the water, environmental groups said yesterday as they urged Congress to support strict water quality controls. Citing the threat of microorganisms that defy chlorine and may escape detection, the groups pointed to federal Centers for Disease Control figures showing that 900,000 Americans are sickened by their drinking water each year. Last year a parasite killed 104 people and sickened 400,000 in Milwaukee.

HARRISBURG - Amid concerns of fallout from Japan's damaged nuclear plants reaching the United States, tests performed on public drinking-water supplies throughout Pennsylvania found no elevated levels of radioactivity, Gov. Corbett said Monday. But low concentrations of iodine 131 - a radioactive byproduct of nuclear fission - have been detected in rainwater at sites throughout the state, he said. "The bottom line is the drinking water is safe," said Corbett, whose announcement in the Capitol, 10 miles from Three Mile Island, came on the 32d anniversary of the nation's worst nuclear accident.

Responding to concerns over groundwater contamination, the House yesterday voted overwhelmingly to strengthen the nation's main environmental law regulating drinking water supplies. The Senate is expected to approve the same measure - an overhaul of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act - and send it to the President, perhaps as early as this week, for his signature. The bill bans the use of lead in drinking-water systems, directs the Environmental Protection Agency to issue standards within three years for 83 contaminants, and requires states to begin taking steps to protect underground sources of drinking water.

Government officials have now confirmed what they strongly suspected a year ago: The radioactive iodine-131 in some of the region's waterways, also found in minute amounts in Philadelphia's drinking water, is coming from thyroid patients. After patients swallow the chemical in capsule or liquid form, some of it passes into their urine, which then enters the wastewater-treatment system and winds up in rivers that provide drinking water, the officials said. Philadelphia's water is safe, according to officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Philadelphia Water Department, and the city Department of Health.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said that well-water tests of 11 homes in Dimock, Pa., near Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling "did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern. " The samples included three of four households that are receiving drinking water deliveries from the federal government. EPA said it will reevaluate the need to provide water after an additional round of testing. "We are pleased that data released by EPA today on sampling of water in Dimock confirmed earlier findings that Dimock drinking water meets all regulatory standards," said George Stark, spokesman for Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., whose drilling activity has been blamed for well-water contamination.

The multistate agency that governs the Delaware River basin has made a sensible decision to continue a moratorium on natural-gas drilling in the watershed. But that has put the Delaware River Basin Commission at odds with some very powerful forces, including state capitals that provide its funding. Fortunately, aside from a direct threat that wasn't carried out by New Jersey to yank its contribution to the DRBC, the agency hasn't been targeted because of its policies on drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation.

Federal regulators said Thursday that they would deliver drinking water to four households near natural gas wells in the embattled town of Dimock, casting doubt on Pennsylvania's decision to allow a Marcellus Shale operator to halt deliveries in December. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also said it would conduct its own water sampling at 61 homes in the rural Susquehanna County township "to further assess whether any residents are being exposed to hazardous substances that cause health concerns.

Last month, Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer testified before Congress on what he called the "unbiased real facts" of shale-gas exploration. Speaking before the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, he gave four examples of "suspect science" on the safety of hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas. One of the examples he discussed at length was our study at Duke University. Our study with two coworkers, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May, found no evidence that fracturing fluids had contaminated drinking water, but it did find evidence of higher methane, ethane, and propane concentrations in some drinking-water wells near drilling sites.

Do you support continuing the moratorium on drilling in the Delaware River region that provides this area's drinking water?

If you despair of the direction of today's youth, the general torpor and indifference of so many, head to Central High. Visiting this school, one of the region's academic treasures, a United Nations of young talent, always makes me feel better about teenagers, Philadelphia, and, well, almost everything. There should be a dozen Centrals, and the day that occurs, we can claim success. Central is home to many remarkable students, including sophomore Afaq Mahmoud, whom her friends call Fofo, pronounced "Fufu.

Don't distort fracking debate Banning fracking would reverse the 70 percent reduction in natural-gas prices consumers have experienced since 2008. This would have a stark impact on Pennsylvania families, especially low-income families, who spend almost a quarter of their after-tax income on energy. An attack on affordable energy is an attack on low-income families' ability to heat their homes, run hot water, and cook food. Thankfully, we don't have to choose between the environment and the poor, because drilling is being done responsibly, ensuring clean water and fresh air. But in "Drilling push raises stakes on health, environment," (Sept.

Maybe if Pennsylvania natural-gas drillers hadn't tallied hundreds of serious environmental violations during the still-nascent Marcellus Shale boom, the ranks of protesters who swarmed an industry conference in Philadelphia this week would have been a little thinner. But it's those violations, incurred when extracting natural gas by pumping a witch's brew of chemicals underground, that have given so many people understandable pause over the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.