Drinking Water

Pennsylvania regulators on Tuesday called on Marcellus Shale natural-gas drillers to stop sending wastewater to 15 treatment plants, citing an increased risk of contaminating public drinking water supplies. The Department of Environmental Protection's action, while voluntary, will likely set the stage for a formal ban on the discharge of inadequately treated wastewater into the state's rivers. "Now is the time to take action to end this practice," acting DEP Secretary Michael Krancer said in a statement Tuesday.

They'll be rescuing Robeson's roadsides. Picking up along the Perkiomen. Foraging for foreign objects in French Creek. Want to join in? Check out www.SchuylkillScrub.org , a website aiming to round up the diverse spring cleanup community into one big organized whole by listing events and other information. You've seen them. Come spring, folks are out along the region's waterways, hauling old tires out of the muck. Volunteers fan out across parklands and traipse the roadsides, picking up litter that otherwise would wash into waterways.

Finding the source of radioactive iodine in Philadelphia's drinking water won't be easy. Many experts believe the most likely source is Iodine-131, used to treat thyroid cancer or a hyperthyroid. But nothing allows scientists and investigators to track an Iodine-131 sample to a specific medical facility or other source the way, say, they can follow the migratory path of a bird. "There is nothing that will tag that radioactive material from one location to the other," said John Keklak, director of radiation safety at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

The Philadelphia Water Department announced yesterday that it is enhancing its testing procedures and reviewing treatment technology after federal environmental officials found radioactive iodine in the city's drinking water. The level of Iodine-131 found at the Queen Lane treatment plant is the highest of 23 sites in 13 states where the particles have appeared following the massive radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Lower levels were found at the city's two other plants.

Authorities are investigating why samples of drinking water from three sites in Philadelphia had a higher level of radioactive iodine than water in other cities. Levels of Iodine-131 found April 4 in samples from treated water at the Queen Lane, Baxter, and Belmont plants were considered within federal safety standards, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The most common sources of Iodine-131 are nuclear reactors and weapons, but doctors also use it to diagnose and treat thyroid illnesses.

Louis Matoushek wants natural gas production to start yesterday on his land northeast of Scranton. His livelihood is at stake. The holdup is that it's near the Delaware River. Three years ago, after a company had already drilled a well, the commission that governs water use in the river halted all activity. "I'm very upset," said Matoushek, who's retired. "They changed the rules in the middle of the game. " About 150 miles downstream in Philadelphia, Christopher Crockett wants to slam on the brakes.

From the safety of dry land in Philadelphia, tsunamis in Japan, floods in New Orleans, multiyear droughts in San Diego, and fracking mishaps in Western Pennsylvania might look like other people's problems. But the water issues confronting this region in the near future will be no less severe, or costly to remedy. That was the sobering lesson of a two-day symposium this weekend at the University of Pennsylvania. Sponsored by Penn's design school, the event brought a flow of ideas from an international lineup of designers, landscape architects, engineers, and historians.

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.