Water Foul: West Virginia needs to learn some limits
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
24 August 2009
People in Western Pennsylvania are used to the notion of ambient air
pollution -- harmful emissions that drift from one state to another.
Why couldn't the same thing happen to water?
It does, unfortunately, as municipal authorities, industries and water
customers along the Monongahela River know quite well.
Pennsylvania environmental officials have been charting a stubborn and
mysterious problem in the waters of the Mon -- unusually high levels of
total dissolved solids, microscopic contaminants that can enter a river
from abandoned mines, agricultural runoff, wastewater from gas drilling
or discharges from industrial or sewage plants.
TDS can cause bad-smelling and -tasting drinking water and problems for
industrial water users. While for most people the water is safe to
drink, it can cause allergic reactions in others.
Last year high levels of TDS were found in a 70-mile stretch of the
Monongahela River that provides 325,000 people with drinking water.
There were no reports of illness and tests did not show the water to be
unsafe. But DEP recommended the use of bottled water for customers of
11 public water systems, especially those whose tap water smelled foul
and tasted bad.
TDS continues to show up in the river to such a degree that the state
Department of Environmental Protection has asked the federal
Environmental Protection Agency to set tough new limits on levels of
the contaminants flowing in from West Virginia. That's welcome news.
While Pennsylvania has acted to limit the amount of TDS discharged in
the state, readings last month on the microscopic particles spiked much
higher as the water flowed in from its neighbor to the south. DEP
Secretary John Hanger said because West Virginia will not take action
on its own, he is compelled to ask the federal government for help
toward getting some interstate cooperation.
West Virginia officials said they'll cooperate with DEP and the EPA to
develop a better standard for such water contaminants. But seeing is
believing, and Pennsylvania hasn't seen it yet.
Just as people in this state don't need to breathe Ohio's foul air, we
don't need to drink the smelly stuff West Virginia sends downstream.
It's time for the neighbors to start minding the water.