6. The Communities Rising - Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Emergency and What We the People Can Do About It

6. THE COMMUNITIES RISING

Imagine if the nightly news reported that we had a bioterrorism threat that could affect millions of Americans. It would be mayhem! People would be in a panic, running for cover, and demanding that our elected officials help protect us all. Yet there is a threat affecting millions of Americans—drinking contaminated water in this country—and it is business as usual. Water pollution is one of the greatest risks to human health, and few of us realize the intensifying burdens on our country’s water resources until these problems turn up at our door.

When most of us think of a water crisis, we think of what we saw in Flint, Michigan, but all communities are vulnerable to (and many are experiencing) all kinds of water crises. Ongoing infrastructure issues, lack of resources, misappropriated funds, and shortsighted decisions go right along with toxic contamination to impact our water supply each day. A water main breaks in the U.S. every 2.5 minutes or so, according to Casey Dinges, senior managing director of the American Society of Civil Engineers. These breaks are caused by many factors, including changes in temperature, corrosion, and deterioration of old pipes. Repairing these breaks usually requires the water to be shut off, and during that time contaminants can enter the water supply.

LOSING WATER IN WEST VIRGINIA

It’s easy to take clean water for granted until it’s suddenly not there. Just ask any of the 300,000 residents in Charleston, West Virginia, who woke up one morning in January 2014 to a do-not-drink order on their tap water. They couldn’t brush their teeth, brew a cup of coffee, or make oatmeal that morning thanks to an industrial chemical spill, and not a small one at that. About ten thousand gallons of an unregulated chemical, 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM), leaked from a storage tank into the Elk River. The cause? Corrosion—in the form of a one-inch hole where chemicals seeped out and into the river. Records showed that the tank had not been inspected since 1991.

Do-not-drink orders like this one, along with boil advisories, are becoming more common in cities and towns throughout the nation. They are indicative of larger drinking water problems at play and show the gaps and failures in our infrastructure. From the calls and emails I receive, I could easily estimate that there are 1,500 boil-water advisories happening each month in the U.S., but no one is tracking them at the national level. Suddenly losing access to clean water or wondering whether the water is safe to drink is both a huge inconvenience and a health hazard. No one wants to receive this kind of wake-up call.

It’s no secret that West Virginia is a global hub for the chemical industry with the presence of conglomerates like DuPont, Bayer, and Stockmeier Urethanes USA. A little-known fact is that such chemical storage containers are scattered along American waterways, often near critical infrastructure such as water treatment plants. In this case Freedom Industries, a company that processed and stored chemicals for the coal industry, owned the tank situated about a mile upstream from the West Virginia American Water treatment plant. Even with a robust carbon filtration system, the treatment facility, which supplies water to most of the households in the state capital, was overwhelmed as the chemical leaked downstream to its facility and released a pungent, licorice-like odor into the air. Many residents remained under a “do-not-use” advisory for more than a week. Hundreds were treated at local hospitals for a host of health problems including severe skin rashes and sores, dizziness, and vomiting. Scores of schools and businesses shut down as well. Sam’s Club and every other retailer within a twenty-mile radius sold out of bottled water.

About five thousand people reached out to me in the days after the spill. Bob Bowcock and I worked with local organizers to host a town hall meeting at the Charleston Municipal Auditorium on extremely short notice. During the discussion, many community members voiced their frustration and said they felt helpless. People in times of crisis need leaders, yet local legislators let their phones ring rather than answering their constituents’ questions, according to many residents’ accounts. When these incidents happen, trust gets diluted. People wake up to how little they know about their water system and are left wondering who is helping protect them and their health.

Bob and I couldn’t believe officials hadn’t thought to inventory the chemical sitting in this tank or the thirteen others along the Elk River, as they clearly posed a threat to the water supply. If terrorists dumped unknown chemicals into a community, we would call it a chemical attack. But when it’s American industry, we let the chips fall where they may. At the time, chemicals stored aboveground in West Virginia were not subject to regular environmental inspections, and the plant had no spill prevention or response plan in place. MCHM is one of the more than sixty thousand chemicals grandfathered as part of the Toxic Substances Control Act. While the use of this chemical was technically legal, officials in West Virginia, including chemists, toxicologists, and emergency responders, scrambled to find any information about it and its impact on people.

One of the most honest statements came from Jeff McIntyre, president of the West Virginia American Water company at that time, who said, “We don’t know that the water is not safe, but I can’t say it is safe. The only appropriate use for this water is toilet flushing.”

Meanwhile, state officials contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for advice on whether the water was safe to drink. The CDC didn’t have a standard in place for MCHM, so they made one up relying on a small amount of data. The agency set a drinking water advisory of 1 ppm based on limited information they requested from the manufacturer, Eastman Chemical Company, which included one animal toxicology study.

“There are unknowns,” acknowledged Karen Bowling, West Virginia’s secretary of health and human resources at the time. “So, we have to rely on what’s already known about [it] and what’s [been] tested about this particular chemical.”

Residents depended on these standards. They were also subject to the hemming and hawing of Gary Southern, then president of Freedom Industries, who drank bottled water during a press conference and dodged questions from local reporters.

On the day of the incident he said, “Look guys, it’s been an extremely long day. I’m having a lot of trouble talking at the moment. I would appreciate it if we could wrap this thing up.”

These comments are reminiscent of BP CEO Tony Hayward after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill, the worst in U.S. history, when he said, “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.”

They both speak about themselves, not the people suffering. They speak from a corporate culture of ducking responsibility, leaving the locals to handle the ramifications of their pollution. Days after the spill, Freedom Industries declared bankruptcy and closed shop. The damage had been done, and not just to residents who may have drunk contaminated water, but also to businesses that had to close, workers who lost wages, and even the city of Charleston, which reported losing more than $120,000 in tax revenue in the days after the disaster.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, said complaints about the contaminated water continued for months after the disaster and that people refused to drink the water. In April of that year, the health department conducted a survey, which found that fewer than 40 percent of respondents were drinking water from their taps and fewer than 10 percent felt that their water was safe.

Two years after the incident, a federal judge fined Freedom Industries $900,000 for violating the Clean Water Act, but it’s unlikely that the already-bankrupt company will ever pay their criminal penalty. Southern did go to court and on February 17, 2016, he was sentenced to one month in federal prison, followed by a six-month term of supervised release, and a $20,000 fine for environmental crimes connected to the 2014 chemical spill. Five other former officials from the company were also prosecuted for federal crimes associated with the incident, but these fines and jail times are more like wrist slaps to these executives. Southern was later accused of trying to hide $6.5 million in his savings by transferring the money to an annuity account to protect it from creditors.

Booth Goodwin, the lead prosecutor in the case, described the spill as “completely preventable.”

“If we don’t want it to happen again, we need to make it crystal clear that those who engage in this kind of criminal behavior will be held accountable. That’s exactly what we have done through these prosecutions,” he said in a statement.

About 225,000 residents and thousands of business owners filed a class-action lawsuit against Eastman Chemical and West Virginia American Water. The lawsuit alleges that the water company did not prepare for a leak of that kind near its facility. In 2017, the $151 million settlement offered the average household more than $500, while compensation for businesses ranged from $6,000 to $40,000 per claim.

Both companies issued statements not admitting fault:

West Virginia American Water said, “A resolution through a settlement allows us and our dedicated employees to serve our customers without the distractions of ongoing lawsuits.”

Eastman said, “We worked with plaintiffs’ counsel to negotiate a global settlement to resolve all litigation, and to provide benefits and closure to the community.”

Nearly two months after the spill, the state House of Representatives and Senate passed legislation to help further regulate chemical storage. The House bill passed 95 to 0 and specified that the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) needed to conduct inventory and annual inspections of the 1,600 above-ground storage tanks located close to drinking water supplies. It also required public utilities to have a response plan in place for chemical spills. In April 2014, West Virginia governor Ray Tomblin signed into law the bill that is commonly referred to as the “storage tank law.” The state completed all inspections in January 2015 and discovered that about 1,100 tanks did not meet the new requirements.

Several other states, including Virginia, Indiana, and Georgia, followed suit, passing similar legislation requiring inspections for these chemical tanks. Joe Manchin, U.S. senator from West Virginia, tried to take these rules nationwide, but so far lawmakers have not passed any federal mandates. Nationwide regulations would help prevent these kinds of spills and protect communities across state lines. The Elk River feeds into the Ohio River, and in 2015 scientists detected crude MCHM in Louisville, Kentucky—meaning that the chemical traveled hundreds of miles across state lines. We still don’t know the impact to people in Kentucky and in other places that may have ingested trace amounts of this chemical. In the closing hours of the 2015 legislative session, West Virginia legislators passed a partial repeal of the 2014 law with industry lobbyists continuing to push for a total exemption.

The Elk River spill exposed not just industrial negligence but the delicate nature of our country’s water infrastructure. One slipup can cause disaster for an entire town, and that’s not considering the hundreds of billions of dollars in investment that our system desperately needs to stay afloat. In a January 2017 exit memo, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said that our environmental infrastructure needs are significant and that more than $655 billion in investment is needed for drinking water and wastewater in the next twenty years—and that doesn’t include replacing the country’s lead service lines. The average American town maintains a water system that’s at least fifty years old. More antiquated systems have water mains that are at least a century old. Jim Gebhardt, the director for EPA’s Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance Center, wrote on the EPA’s blog, “The implications of deteriorating infrastructure can be felt nationwide—each year our country experiences about 240,000 water main breaks, $2.6 billion is lost as our water mains leak trillions of gallons of treated drinking water, and billions of gallons of raw sewage are discharged into local surface waters from aging sewer overflows.”

Aging water systems burdened with toxic buildup are exactly why this crisis has become so dire. We must properly fund our municipalities and water treatment plants so that we can reduce further harm. But it’s a complicated problem that will take more than a fledgling EPA or a disconcerted administration. I’m here to help sound the alarm for all of us and share stories from those people working on the front lines for safer, cleaner water. These folks have seen pollution issues on their doorstep. They have faced incredible health challenges and have had their lives impacted by poisoned water. They have asked the biggest question of all: Why? They have gone searching for answers, helping to make change. It’s my passionate hope that telling their stories will inspire you to join them. It’s time to realize that change begins with each of us.

NOT A DROP TO DRINK

Perhaps no place better exemplifies how infrastructure fails people than Martin County, Kentucky, one of the poorest counties in the country. President Lyndon Johnson visited the tiny town of Inez, the county seat, in 1964 to garner support for his war on poverty. More than fifty years later, the poverty rate there hovers close to 40 percent, which is more than twice the national average. While some of the richest coal mines in the U.S. are located in Martin County, today many of them are closed and residents are unemployed.

Years of mismanagement and neglect have made water problems the norm in this rural Appalachian community. Pipes are cracked and leaking. A coal slurry spill in 2000 flooded local rivers with more than 300 million gallons of toxic sludge, contributing to concerns about water quality. Even today, residents’ water bills include warnings about disinfection byproducts violating EPA standards in their water. Meanwhile, brown water is flowing from their taps when water is running, while many people contend with restricted water hours or have lost all access to water for days and weeks at a time. The aging water system has been failing residents for years, and the situation got so bad that a January 2018 video of an emergency Martin County Fiscal Court meeting to discuss the water went viral with footage of an angry citizen being choked by a police officer and dragged out of the meeting.

“I regret none of it because I was standing up for the people of Martin County,” Gary Hunt, who was cited for disorderly conduct and escorted out of the meeting, told a local news station. “It’s not just been this winter it’s been an ongoing problem for five years.”

Schools were closed for more than ten days in January 2018 alone because the water was turned off from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. Without access to water, the schools can’t open as the restrooms can’t be used and food can’t be served. School closures also mean that the more than 350 children in the community who rely on meals at school went hungry those days.

The Martin County Water District announced its plan to solve the problem by proposing an almost 50 percent increase in water rates. Most residents can’t afford to pay their bills. More than one in ten households throughout the country can’t afford their water bills either. If the new rates are approved, the average water bill will be more than $63 a month—making rates in Martin County the second highest of all water districts in the state.

“Two years after Flint, Michigan, called attention to the systemic water woes hitting our most vulnerable people and poorest communities, the epidemic of water poverty in this country shows no signs of abating,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, in a statement. “Now, Martin County urgently needs assistance to address the systemic failure of its water system. The entire community has had water outages for weeks and water quality problems have plagued the county for years.”

Once again, having clean water in America is not a given. This Kentucky county needs a functioning water system. But every crisis has a silver lining, and this one did bring locals together to demand action. Consumers have played an important role in helping to spread awareness about this story. Two community groups, one called Concerned Citizens of Martin County and another online group called the Martin County Water Warriors, helped attract media attention and worked with their county to find solutions.

“We just want to help our water plant,” Nina McCoy, a local organizer with Concerned Citizens, told a local news station. “I mean this is our water plant, we are not fighting our water plant.”

After locals started reaching out to me, I sent my water expert Bob Bowcock in February 2018 to assess the problem and work with water officials to provide people there with answers. Bob found serious problems with their source water and an outdated treatment plant—designed for one town not an entire county. Trained professionals from other states are now on the ground fixing leaks and helping to train water operators there to fix systemic problems.

The community is on the right track, as the water board has new members who are receptive to new ideas and input and active community groups holding them accountable, along with local and national media coverage. The new board of directors has secured $4.7 million in funding for the county’s infrastructure, including $3.4 million from the offices of Governor Matt Bevin and U.S. Representative Hal Rogers.

“Martin County presents an opportunity to demonstrate a community’s resolve to everyone working together, digging themselves out of a really bad situation, and moving forward in a positive way,” Bob told the local press. “I hope it sets an example to help other communities in Kentucky and across this country.”

I don’t claim to have all the answers when it comes to our water woes. I’m not afraid to admit that when I started my work in this field, I knew nothing about chromium-6 or water contamination in general. I was a broke, single mom with dyslexia trying to make ends meet. I was the least likely person to become anyone’s hero, but I was willing to listen to people’s stories and use my common sense to guide me. I would make phone calls to experts to get more information, which sometimes meant calling the same toxicologist multiple times in one day until I understood what needed to happen next. I was willing to do my part to put the pieces together to help a community. That’s all it takes. You only need to make the commitment to ask one question, make one phone call, show up to one meeting, or talk to one neighbor. You don’t have to know all the steps, you just need to be willing to take that first step and get started somewhere. As you read more of the stories of people I’ve worked with, you’ll see that’s exactly how they got started too.

My job title has morphed into being both a passionate advocate and a kind of “environmental superhero” with Bob as my trusty sidekick and science guy. He and I have traveled to all fifty states, each more than once, responding to and helping with water and other contamination cases. We were first responders at the BP oil spill in 2010. We were on the scene in Louisiana when three different communities discovered deadly brain-eating amoebas in their drinking water systems within weeks of one another. We’ve rallied next to military veterans and their families outside the steps of the Supreme Court when the justices were hearing arguments about the polluted drinking water at North Carolina’s Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. We have helped organize and speak at countless town hall meetings held at universities, public libraries, and American Legion rooms in towns throughout the country. Our goal is to help communities better understand what’s going on with their water and work together to create safe drinking water for everyone.

People think when I speak to a community that I’m coming in with an agenda, but my only role is to empower the people. Politics and party affiliation don’t matter when it comes to clean water, and if there’s one agenda across the board that everyone needs to be united on, it’s making sure that we all have access to safe drinking water. The big message I share is about how to find your voice. Change happens when people are willing to speak up and put pressure on their politicians and agencies, who typically don’t respond until they hear from people in the community. Once you have the facts and information and feel empowered to stand together, you can use your collective voice to ask your officials the necessary questions and garner more attention for these critical issues. That’s the power of the people. Even just one person in a community who cares about the drinking water can quickly gain momentum. One can become two, two can become four, four become eight, and so on. I’ve seen it happen in many places, and I’m excited to share more of these stories, because let’s face it, it’s not always easy to stand up and speak out. It’s scary! It takes courage and determination.

When it comes to drinking water contaminant exposure, toxicology, and health effects, concerned consumers are repeatedly laughed at and told that their water is perfectly safe to drink. Even the so-called experts don’t always know the full scope of the problem as it’s unfolding, and as I’ve mentioned we won’t find chemicals that we don’t test for. People are often told to talk with their medical doctors about their concerns with the water, but medical professionals usually know less about these issues than a random guy walking down the street. Who can you turn to for accurate information about your drinking water? You can start by trusting yourselves to get more involved.

MORE THAN A CHILDREN’S STORY

My work can get quite somber at times, and I’m always looking for ways to address water issues in a way that will rouse my audience. Enter the land of Oz. Yes, it’s a fictional place and I’m sure you have seen the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, on television. The movie is based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the novel written by L. Frank Baum that was published in 1900 during the height of the Industrial Revolution and largely based on his experiences living on the drought-ridden plains of South Dakota.

Baum once said about his work, “I believe that dreams—day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing—are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization.”

While I was growing up in Kansas, Dorothy’s story resonated deeply with me. When her family farm gets hit by a tornado, she is thrust into the sky and taken far from her family. She lands in a new, unfamiliar place—the land of Oz. Her mission becomes clear: to find her way home, because we all know there’s no place like home. To get home, she must travel to the Emerald City, by way of the Yellow Brick Road. On the journey, she meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. But this story and its characters are more than a fantastical childhood tale. I want to share a few interpretations, and why I think these lessons are still so important today.

One theory about the book is that Baum wrote the story to teach his four children the value of individualism, and the power of thinking for themselves in a world where increasingly everyone was being taught to think and work alike. At that time, the world was transitioning from an agrarian society to one of booming industry and manufacturing. Led by both the oil and steel industries, the U.S. quickly rose to become the world’s leading producer of manufactured goods. People started finding more work in factories, and by 1913 Henry Ford had installed the first assembly line for the mass production of automobiles. At the same time, national wealth was increasing and men like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Commodore Vanderbilt were amassing their great fortunes, while 10 million Americans subsisted in poverty. Farmers were producing more than ever, but surpluses caused crop prices to plunge. From 1870 to 1897, wheat prices dropped from $1.06 a bushel to 63 cents a bushel, corn from 43 cents to 30 cents a bushel, and cotton from 15 cents to 6 cents per pound, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Tensions grew between farmers and industry. These times tested the American Dream, which promised success and prosperity for all who were willing to work for it. Perhaps Baum was also reminding us not to leave behind the people who helped build our great country—the farmers, the factory workers, and the families.

Another interpretation of this children’s story comes from Henry Littlefield, a high school history teacher, who proposed that the story of Oz was an allegory on populism, a political reform movement supporting the concerns and rights of the people. In an essay published in American Quarterly in 1964, Littlefield describes how each character in the book represented an interested party from that time. First, you have Dorothy, who exemplifies the everyday, hardworking people looking for a better life. He theorized that the Cowardly Lion was William Jennings Bryan, a politician from Nebraska who ran as a Populist and Democratic candidate for president in both 1896 and 1900. He was nicknamed “the Lion” because of his fiery rhetoric and was called cowardly for not supporting America’s decision to go to war with Spain in 1898. The Scarecrow is the American farmer seen as uninformed and ignorant by the elite policymakers—“if they only had a brain.” The Tin Man represents the industrial workers who had been exploited and worked as cogs in the machine for their rich and powerful employers. The Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard, which was a debate at the time. Would the economy be based on a fixed amount of gold, which many rich businessmen supported, or would farmers and others who were in favor of the unlimited use of silver coins win out? In the original manuscript, Dorothy wore silver slippers representing the fact that farmers and laborers supported free silver. In the movie version, the slippers changed to a ruby-red color because producers thought the shoes would stand out more in Technicolor. And finally, there’s the Wizard, who Littlefield said was any president of the United States. The people looked up to this position, but the president was merely subservient to the interest of the evil witches, who epitomized Wall Street and the interests of big business. Does any of this sound familiar? Today, we have industry lobbyists—perhaps the flying monkeys—along with many other problems associated with money in our political system. We all put power in our elected officials while wondering who is really holding their strings.

During my own journey on the Pacific Gas and Electric case, I decided I wanted to meet the Wizard. I wanted to peek behind the curtain at one of the largest natural gas and electric energy companies in the U.S. to see how things really worked. Do you know what I found? Just like Dorothy, I discovered that the Wizard is only as powerful as we let him be. The Wizard is nothing more than a power-hungry few at the top, who rule through fear and intimidation with a lot of flash. And you know what else I learned? I wasn’t afraid of the Wicked Witch or her flying monkeys either. Those things scared the hell out of me as a kid! My journey has shown me that there is no Wizard or person out there who’s going to give me the answers. The journey Dorothy takes home is one into her own heart and mind. It’s a journey that leads her to understand, for the first time, that she could always get home, that she had the power to make that happen. I could say the same thing to industry—you have the power and you can use your power for good to clean up your mess and become a better neighbor.

To me, the characters in Oz also represent people who think they are missing what it takes to stand up to the powerful industrial forces. They think they don’t have what it takes to fight pollution. But as we all walk down our own path, whether we are searching for more money, job security, justice, or better health, we must remember that we all have enough brains, heart, and courage to get the job done. You may go searching for the Emerald City, and go chasing the Wizard, hoping for someone to help make your life better and return you back home. I have learned through my journey that we already have the answers to bring ourselves home. The problem is not what you don’t have; it’s what you don’t know that you do have. Water is life. It’s time for all of us to step up and save it.

Barbara Kingsolver, a novelist, once wrote, “Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.” That’s exactly what Bob and I do each day, along with the thousands of other people working on water issues today. I’ve learned to tune out the noisy thoughts that tell me I can’t do it—that these problems are just too big. Instead, I show up each day with new hope. I love this planet and I know we can still save it. I show up because I love my family and I want them to live in a world with clean water. Love will see us through these struggles.

Action begins right at the local level—everyday people getting involved to fight for a better future and help their communities. That’s what this book is all about—empowering you to make a difference. It’s about becoming your own hero. Real change happens when people have the knowledge and tenacity to stand up and fight. When you see something wrong in your own backyard, you need to speak out. I’m a firm believer in the power of communities banding together to act. I hope these stories will inspire you to look at the issues in your town, talk to your neighbors, get involved in local politics, and be part of the movement in America to clean up our water.

RUNNING TYSON OUT OF TOWN

This tale takes place in Tonganoxie, Kansas—a town fifteen miles from where I was raised in Lawrence. In September 2017, mothers from “Tongie,” as the locals call it, started emailing me asking for help to fight a massive Tyson Foods chicken-processing plant (also known as a slaughterhouse) coming to their town. Founded in 1931, Tyson is one the largest producers of meat and poultry in the world, employing more than ninety-five thousand people in its U.S. production facilities, but it’s also one of the biggest polluters, responsible for dumping millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into America’s waterways.

Chicken is big business in our country. Americans eat more chicken than any other country in the world, according to the National Chicken Council. Each year, the chicken industry (which consists of about thirty-five large companies) raises and slaughters almost 9 billion chickens for food. At the top of that chicken chain is Tyson, which processes and sells more than $11 billion worth of chickens each year and leads in the production of ready-to-cook poultry products. The company has a long record of criminal prosecutions for both pollution and labor practices. Tyson was the second-biggest polluter of our waterways from 2010 to 2014, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, ranking only behind AK Steel and just above the U.S. Department of Defense. Tyson and its subsidiaries’ processing plants dumped more than 104 million pounds of toxic pollutants into waterways during that time, more than Cargill, Koch Industries, and ExxonMobil combined. Think about that the next time you’re shopping for chicken at your grocery store.

Thousands of animals living together in cramped facilities leads to big pollution problems. Commercial chicken farms and processing facilities produce large amounts of waste. Oftentimes, manure gets stored in massive piles near the facility that can leak into the water system. In addition, slaughterhouses use millions of gallons of water to flush away tons of chicken guts, heads, feathers, and blood. While facilities are required to treat the water before they release it, toxins still slip through.

The southeastern shores of Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland are often referred to as “chicken country” thanks to their abundance of big poultry farms and processing facilities. Back in 1998, Tyson paid a $4 million civil penalty, which was the largest fine ever imposed on a food-processing company in Maryland, for a plant they had bought and taken over in Berlin, Maryland, which discharged illegal amounts of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other toxins into a creek near the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the U.S. Although nitrogen and phosphorus are necessary nutrients to sustain plant and animal life, it’s a delicate balance. In excess, these compounds become food for algae, causing it to grow out of control. These harmful algal blooms produce toxic effects on people, fish, and birds. By 1999, up to one-third of underground wells in this area did not meet EPA drinking water standards for nitrate, which is a compound of nitrogen that is concentrated in chicken waste.

Companies can legally dump their waste into our waterways; they just need an NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit. The Clean Water Act prohibits anyone from discharging pollutants (industrial, municipal, and agricultural waste) through a “point source” into a U.S. body of water—unless they have this permit. A “point source” includes pipes, ditches, channels, containers, and concentrated animal feeding operations. The permit specifies limits on what a company can discharge and comes with monitoring and reporting requirements that are intended to maintain both water quality and human health.

Companies like Tyson continue to violate the law. In 2003, Tyson pleaded guilty to twenty felony violations of the Clean Water Act at its Sedalia, Missouri, poultry plant, paying $7.5 million to the U.S. and the state of Missouri. Tyson admitted to having illegally discharged untreated wastewater from its poultry-processing plant into a tributary of the Lamine River. The plant processed about 1 million chickens per week, generating hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater each day. Between 1996 and 2001, Tyson repeatedly discharged untreated or inadequately treated wastewater from its plant. Despite several citations from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, numerous warnings, administrative orders, two state court injunctions, and the execution of a federal search warrant at the Sedalia facility to stop its illegal discharges, Tyson continued to dump untreated wastewater through its storm drains.

Also in 2003, Tyson and five other poultry companies agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where officials claimed the companies were responsible for 170 million pounds of chicken waste polluting Lake Eucha and Spavinaw watershed, which provides drinking water to the city’s residents.

Tyson paid the maximum fine of $500,000 for violating worker safety regulations at its River Valley Animal Foods plant in Texarkana, Arkansas, in June 2009. A maintenance employee was overcome with hydrogen sulfide gas while repairing a leak at the facility and later died. Another employee and two emergency responders were hospitalized due to exposure during the rescue attempt, and two other employees were treated at the scene.

The Justice Department fined Tyson $2 million in August 2009 for dumping its waste into the Missouri River. Tyson paid another $5.2 million in February 2011 to settle allegations that the company had bribed Mexican officials to certify chicken products for export. In September of that same year, Tyson paid $32 million to settle a twelve-year litigation over whether the company should pay its hourly poultry-plant workers for the time it took them to change into and out of their work clothes and protective gear. The company settled a similar lawsuit in 2014, avoiding a trial by paying $7.75 million to workers at a Tyson Fresh Meats beef- and pork-processing plant in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. In 2016, Oxfam America released a report showing that Tyson poultry workers were denied bathroom breaks and that many wore diapers during their work shift to stay on the job all day.

Despite its previous lawbreaking ways, the company has publicized its commitment to sustainable food production and to expand efforts for a better workplace. “We believe sustainability is about continuous improvement and solutions that last, and this includes a healthier workplace,” said Noel White, chief operations officer at Tyson Foods, in 2017. “We’ve always been committed to supporting our employees and have sound workplace practices in place, but also want to do better. That’s why we’re taking steps that include expanding training, improving workplace safety and compensation, increasing transparency and helping workers with life skills.”

Back in Tonganoxie in September 2017, Tyson company officials announced plans to build a $320 million poultry complex by 2019, the first new plant for the company in twenty years. The Kansas governor was on board and excited to announce the estimated 1,600 new jobs it would create for the town, which is significant for a town of 5,300 people. But local moms were not happy about this news. They sent me photographs of their children playing and wrote to me pleading that they didn’t want this giant corporation to ruin their small, beautiful town or endanger their kids’ safety. The proposed site was just blocks from a local baseball field and a few miles from the local elementary and middle schools.

One woman explained, “We live on well water roughly 2.7 miles from town. My children and I play in the creek that runs on our property. We have a pond. Our community will be destroyed. Please help us. We need every voice we can get.” Another woman wrote, “Americans need to start coming together coast to coast to propose a law that prevents bullies like Tyson picking on the little towns like us! Erin, how can we win this?”

I often struggle with how I can help communities facing giant corporations and their hired guns, toting along paid-off politicians and offering promises of jobs. I have received pollution and environmental complaints about Tyson Foods for more than a decade, and I know that the company’s record speaks for itself. When I posted an article about the Tyson plant on Facebook, it got thousands of shares and more than four hundred comments. Sometimes, a little media attention and recognition from me is all it takes to get a community going on their own. They created a nonprofit organization and launched a social media campaign, creating a Facebook group, which quickly grew to more than six thousand members. (Facebook is still one of the fastest and easiest organizing tools for groups, despite the many controversies the company has faced in recent years.) Activists made white-and-red signs that said, “No Tyson in Tongie” to display on homeowners’ lawns and T-shirts with the same slogan. Signs are a great way to raise awareness and get more people interested in these cases.

“The continued presence and involvement of area citizens in local politics and the community speaks volumes about the unity regarding planning for the best interests of our region in the future,” said Jen Peak, one of the Tongie organizers, in a statement. “The fact that ‘No Tyson in Tongie’ signs are still on every street throughout town and all over the countryside is a testament to the strong, unified, and continued opposition to and vigilance regarding the proposed Tyson Project.”

In 2017, mothers from Tonganoxie, Kansas, or “Tongie” as the locals call it, started emailing me asking for help to fight a massive Tyson Foods chicken-processing plant in their town. Organizers for “No Tyson in Tongie” made signs and showed up in droves to town meetings.

People in town also showed up in droves to a September 2017 rally organized by Kansas legislators, including Kansas Republican state representative Jim Karleskint, who lives near the town and said it was the largest gathering he’s ever seen for a community of their size. And then the kicker: the county’s board of commissioners, which had just approved $500 million in industrial revenue bonds for the Tyson facilities, revoked its decision five days later. Tyson soon announced its plans were on hold while it scouted for other plant locations. If companies want to do business with these small towns, they need to clean up their act and get off the list of our nation’s biggest polluters. Tyson said they wanted to hold town meetings to address residents’ questions, but then they never bothered to show up. The people have spoken, and they are ready for business that is environmentally sustainable. It’s time to stop polluting for profit, and in our own backyards.

CLEANING UP CHROME-6

Justice doesn’t come all at once; it usually comes in steps. No place exemplifies this idea more than Hinkley, California, where after more than twenty-five years and a $333 million settlement awarded to the people, pollution still exists today. National regulations for hexavalent chromium in drinking water remain unchanged since 1991, at a level of 100 ppb for total chromium. California regulations, which were set at a more stringent 10 ppb for chromium-6 in 2014, were revoked in 2017 due to a lawsuit alleging the state had not conducted an economic feasibility study. The people who live in Hinkley today are still dealing with pollution problems and have continued to push for Pacific Gas and Electric to do the right thing and clean up their mess. I wish there was better news to share with you about this town. We’re finally starting to see some cleanup happen, but it’s been a longer road than anyone could have anticipated. I can’t believe that more than twenty years later I’m still talking about what happened in this small desert town, but this story represents so much of what the water crisis today is all about. This case is really the story of how corporations, like PG&E, pollute and get away with it.

Back in the ’90s, Roberta Walker spearheaded the effort to get help for her town. She spent hours at the local water board looking at maps of her neighborhood and making copies of old files. She came to the law offices of Masry & Vititoe holding a huge box of documents—remember, those times were not as digital as today—and that’s what jump-started my journey from a legal clerk to consumer advocate. Thanks to Roberta’s persistence and stellar research along with community support, we won that lawsuit. I had sincerely hoped it would provide justice for the people of Hinkley and preserve life in that town, not to mention bring these important issues into the public eye. But the lawsuit and the movie were just another layer in this case.

In December of 2010 (about fourteen years after the lawsuit had been settled), Roberta had another Hinkley resident calling her all the time. When they finally met during a lunch break, Carmela presented her with documents that stunned Roberta. Carmela knew about the 1996 settlement though she had not been part of it, but when her horses stopped drinking the water at her Hinkley home, she became worried. It was no secret in town that PG&E was lagging on the cleanup, but she had proof that the original plume of contamination was in fact spreading. Again, action began with one person trusting their common sense that the water was still poisoned. Roberta had moved seven miles northeast of her original home in Hinkley to escape the pollution, thinking the contamination was limited to a certain area near the compressor station. Now, that same plume was only a mile from her new home and still growing.

Elaine Kearney moved into her dream home in Hinkley in 1995, near her sister’s ten-acre property and right before the first case in town was settled. By 2010, one of her daughters had had five miscarriages and dealt with painful ovarian cysts, while another was in treatment for advanced cancer. Even the family dog was covered in tumors. Elaine herself had heart disease and strokes that kept her in and out of hospitals. She had seen houses throughout her neighborhood getting bulldozed after PG&E bought them. In a New York Times article, she talked about her property value and health issues, “We can’t sell it,” she said. “We can’t walk away or we’ll lose a chance at a settlement.”

Once again, residents got into action. This time they put pressure on PG&E, raised awareness about the company’s lingering and leisurely cleanup efforts, and demanded more accountability from the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which was described by a Times article as “a chronically underfunded state agency that evaluates and enforces PG&E’s cleanup plans.” The water quality board was assessing PG&E’s treatment of the plume. At the time, PG&E’s plan involved injecting the tainted chromium-6 groundwater with ethanol, which is no great elixir, to help convert it to the less harmful chromium-3. But a feasibility study from the water board found that this method could take more than a hundred years to restore the area. And not long after learning all this information, Roberta got another knock on her door from PG&E, once again offering to buy her home and deliver clean bottled water to her family.

Roberta was not the only resident offered another buyout. Between 2010 and October 2014, PG&E purchased about three hundred more properties in Hinkley. By 2012, the company paid another $3.6 million fine to the town because of the spreading pollution. The company still admitted to no wrong-doing but promised to install new wells and help improve the drinking water quality at the local elementary school. As more residents left town, Hinkley’s school shut down in 2013, after talks with PG&E to help subsidize it failed. The school, which originally opened in 1902, had taught many generations of Hinkley children. Not long afterward, the town’s post office closed too.

By 2013, PG&E had spent more than $700 million on its cleanup efforts, but the contaminated water persisted. Sheryl Bilbrey, in charge of PG&E remediation efforts at that time, told PBS journalist Miles O’Brien on NewsHour, “It’s a very complex project. We are highly regulated. There’s a lot of interested parties. The other thing is, it’s very important to us that we get it right.” I was interviewed during this same segment, and I said that I thought the cleanup was under control, and so did the state and the community.

Reports from the water board clearly state that from July 2011 to July 2014, hexavalent chromium concentrations steadily increased from 9 to 19 ppb in one well near Acacia Street, and from 2013 and 2014 levels increased from 7.8 to 24 ppb in another well located southeast of Santa Fe Avenue and Mountain View Road. In 2015 the Lahontan board issued another new cleanup order combining outstanding requirements from previous orders and adding new requirements and deadlines for future cleanup and abatement actions.

I thought that after the lawsuit, and certainly after the movie, PG&E would clean up this pollution. They didn’t. They stalled on cleanup for years, as the cover-up continued. It’s hard to imagine that all this trouble and heartbreak was caused by a chemical that helped control rust in their gas cooling towers. When I think about the situation, I feel sad, disappointed, and even disgusted by PG&E’s actions. It really brings up so many questions about such contamination cases and their subsequent cleanup. What would possibly make a company of this magnitude finally do the right thing? It’s so frustrating for everyone who knows the people there and the town. It’s a place where people live to experience a slower pace of life than in the city, where they can see the stars at night and enjoy riding horses in the open fields during the day. They don’t deserve any of it.

Visiting Hinkley in 2015 I was appalled to see empty lots where so many houses used to stand. Many residents have simply left, seeking a better life for their families. Sadly, there’s little life left in Hinkley beyond a few homes with plunging property values and acres of alfalfa plants still growing in the fields. We need to do better. Thousands of Hinkleys exist in this country—small farming communities where industry dumps their waste and thinks they can get away with it. My hope is that if more people know what’s really going on, we can bring back life to many of these forgotten towns.

In April 2016, the Lahontan board issued another executive order allowing for more vigorous use of ethanol injection into the groundwater, and in November 2016 it approved a comprehensive cleanup order that allowed PG&E to continue with ethanol injections without needing regulatory approvals. The company also pumps the tainted water onto alfalfa fields, where the soil’s bacteria can help convert the chemical back to chromium-3. PG&E’s top environmental executives told California water regulators that at least half of the chromium-6 has been removed from the groundwater in Hinkley and that the plume was starting to retreat in April 2017.

Hinkley was just the beginning. Before that case settled, I began working on another case in 1994 with about 1,100 plaintiffs who also had illnesses related to chromium-6-contaminated groundwater near PG&E’s Kettleman Hills compressor plant. Kettleman City is another farming community nestled between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Two of the longest streets in town are named General Petroleum Avenue and Standard Oil Avenue. Just like the Hinkley timeline, in the ’50s and ’60s runoff from PG&E’s cooling towers seeped into the ground, contaminating the local water supply. When I drove into town to inspect the four big cooling towers, I didn’t see any of the usual signs of contamination. So I got out of my car and started walking around, quietly observing, and that’s when I spotted something. The needles on the tamarisk trees were coated with the same white powder that I had seen in Hinkley. I headed to the local water board to do a little more digging and discovered a 1964 letter from the U.S. Department of the Interior notifying PG&E of excessive chromium-6 in a well in town.

After I talked to residents, it became clear that the contaminated well was used for drinking and bathing. Once we gathered more evidence, we took this case to court, and it took ten years to settle. Take that in for a moment, because while the lawyers, scientists, and researchers were working to get this company to come clean, the families who lived in this town continued to deal with hospital visits, birth defects, and other health issues, while also needing to travel some thirty miles each week to the next largest town of Hanford to load up on bottled water. In 2002, PG&E spokesman Jon Tremayne declined to discuss the details of the Kettleman case with SFGate, but said the utility was ready for a fight. “We will definitely defend ourselves in court,” he said.

The utility was already in the midst of its own crisis as this toxic case came to light. PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2001 facing $9 billion in debt due to state-imposed deregulation laws, market manipulations spearheaded by Enron, and California’s energy crisis, which led to sky-high wholesale power prices and rolling blackouts throughout the state. The bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history for a utility at that time, kept the company afloat to continue providing power to millions of California residents while it worked to renegotiate its debts. But California’s governor, Gray Davis, called the move “a real slap in the face to California.” Consumer advocates called it a “a thinly-veiled effort to escape the California regulatory system.”

Despite PG&E’s financial problems, the Kettleman suit settled for $335 million in 2006. In a twenty-two-page decision, U.S. bankruptcy judge Dennis Montali wrote, “The chromium claims didn’t cause this bankruptcy. Trial in state court should proceed as expeditiously as possible.” Part of the settlement included an apology from PG&E to residents. “Clearly, this situation should never have happened, and we are sorry that it did. It is not the way we do business, and we believe it would not happen in our company today,” according to a company statement. Despite the pretense, the executives and the board of directors remained intact. None of PG&E’s leadership was ever reprimanded for these actions. They paid their fines and continued business as usual.

In 2016, a federal jury found PG&E guilty again—this time for violating safety regulations that led to a gas pipeline explosion in the San Francisco Bay Area that killed eight people and destroyed thirty-eight homes in San Bruno. The utility was convicted not just for the blast but for misleading federal investigators about how they identified high-risk pipelines. They systematically worked to misclassify pipelines and save money rather than apply the appropriate testing and regulations for them. Once again, no one in upper management faced prison time. Ultimately, PG&E was convicted of six felony charges and fined the maximum penalty of $3 million, which is in addition to the $1.6 billion fine the company received from California regulators. The court also prohibited the company from passing down any of these costs to its ratepayers.

In January 2019, the investor-owned utility filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy again, as it faced massive liability claims—up to $30 billion—for the devastating and deadly wildfire seasons in Northern California. This was after the company spent $1.7 million in 2018 lobbying state lawmakers to release them from legal liability associated with wildfire property damages. Hot summers and high winds certainly contributed to the fires, but huge safety failures connected to PG&E’s power lines and faulty hardware have also been connected to an estimated 1,500 fires between 2014 and 2017. The company’s equipment allegedly sparked the Camp Fire in 2018, the state’s deadliest wildfire, which killed eighty-five people and destroyed close to fourteen thousand homes and five hundred businesses. The fire was the world’s costliest natural disaster in 2018 with overall damages topping $16.5 billion.

It’s become clear that declaring bankruptcy has become a tactic for PG&E to skirt responsibility for its poor safety practices and management. Chapter 11 involves a reorganization of the company’s affairs, debts, and assets, but they tend to emerge from this process even more disorganized. Geisha Williams, the first female CEO of PG&E, who was appointed in 2017, stepped down in this most recent bankruptcy, taking with her a $2.5 million severance package. Perhaps her hire was an attempt at a fresh start to help distance the company from the San Bruno mess, but even with her more than thirty years in the utility industry, she was unable to make changes to the corporate culture. John Simon, the company’s general counsel, has been (fittingly) named interim CEO. All eyes will be on the company’s board to see if they will make the necessary changes to do the right thing in the coming years.

Meanwhile, BlueMountain Capital Management LLC, an asset manager owning more than 4 million PG&E shares, has said that the company is solvent and that a bankruptcy would be “damaging, avoidable, and unnecessary.” In a letter to PG&E’s board of directors, BlueMountain wrote, “There is overwhelming evidence that PG&E is solvent. We simply cannot recall a situation where such a valuable company filed for bankruptcy with such blatant questions about the necessity to do so.”

The way I see it, PG&E has never accepted responsibility for any of their actions—going all the way back to Hinkley and dozens of other cases I’ve dealt with up and down the state for more than twenty years. They don’t follow through on their obligations or reinvest the money they make in better safety practices and new equipment. As we continue to deal with climate change and changing weather conditions in California, it’s more important than ever that this company have new infrastructure that can stand up to strong winds and storms.

“Rather than spend the money it obtains from customers for infrastructure maintenance and safety, PG&E funnels this funding to boost its own corporate profits and compensation” are the words used in one lawsuit filed against the company for the Camp Fire.

This is what happens when corporations are left to police themselves. They put profits before safety. This company’s destructive and negligent past should not be overlooked in its bankruptcy proceedings. I believe the courts will hold PG&E accountable, as it will essentially elect a judge as the new CEO. Plus, a newly elected governor in California is looking at the company with fresh eyes.

“PG&E, with respect, has not been a trusted player in the past,” said California governor Gavin Newsom, just days after the utility made its bankruptcy announcement. “They have admitted knowingly misleading regulators in the past—very recent past. That is simply unacceptable.”

In addition, he said, “Every survivor deserves to have their claims heard in a fair process that recognizes their pain and financial losses. I remain steadfastly committed to working with all stakeholders to find a solution that ensures consumers have access to safe, affordable and reliable service; treats wildfire survivors fairly; and enables California to continue making progress toward our climate goals.”

Sadly, for residents of Kettleman City, where almost 30 percent live below the poverty line, their troubles have continued long past the PG&E lawsuit. This tiny community of about 1,600 people is dealing with many other contaminants besides chromium-6. More than half of the workforce are Latino farmworkers, who get exposed to chemicals sprayed in the tomato fields and almond groves. The town is also just three miles down the road from Waste Management, Inc., one of the nation’s largest toxic waste dumps. For years, residents have suspected that these multiple toxic exposures are connected to their health problems, including a large cluster of birth defects—babies being born with enlarged heads and cleft palates. But the biggest problem for this town, and many others like it, is that scientists still have little data about how individual chemicals impact our health, and know even less about the effects of multiple chemicals on the body. It’s difficult to trace the exact pathway these chemicals take to people’s bodies, especially as they result in different kinds of diseases and health issues. We need more research and biomarker tracking to continue to improve our understanding of how these chemicals work and how they create havoc in the body, which I continue to advocate for. However, commonsense instincts tell us that they are related. From my years of work, I believe it’s only a matter of time until the science catches up and helps us understand the cause and effects of exposure to an array of toxic chemicals.

I continue to get emails from people throughout California and work to raise awareness about Kettleman City and towns like it. If you’ve driven on California’s Interstate 5, you’ve probably seen signs in gas stations and hotels that say, “Tainted Water, Use at Your Own Risk.” In 2016, I posted an article on Facebook about two wells in Kettleman that tested positive for high levels of arsenic, three years after the EPA put California on notice for noncompliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Back in 2008, EPA tests found unsafe levels of arsenic, a known carcinogen, in the drinking water of Kettleman City. Five years later, the state started delivering thirty gallons of water each month to residents. It turns out that arsenic is commonly found in tap water throughout the Central Valley. In fact, fifty-five thousand people in ninety-five different public water systems throughout the state are drinking tap water contaminated with arsenic, according to research from the Environmental Integrity Project.

Public water systems are required to notify customers when the water does not meet federal regulations. The notices mailed to consumers about the arsenic read, “You do not need to use an alternative water supply (e.g., bottled water).” Yet the state sent a different warning to the owners of private wells (which are not covered by federal regulations) that read, “If you suspect that your well may have arsenic, you should not use the water until it is tested, and take appropriate measures to protect yourself and your family from potential chronic health effects if arsenic is present.” We need more federal mandates to set strong, health-protective standards for contaminants in drinking water. Without them, states will continue to use inconsistent and potentially unsafe guidelines, leaving citizens confused about the safety of their drinking water.

Imagine living somewhere your whole life and never filling up a glass of water from the faucet. That’s exactly what Kettleman City resident and environmental activist Maricela Mares-Alatorre’s daughter has experienced. Maricela fights for her community, whose claim to fame is poor water quality and high levels of pollution, by organizing rallies, joining task forces, and talking on radio and TV to bring more awareness to these issues.

She relayed the story about her daughter to a local news station saying, “My daughter last year we were watching a movie, and she saw somebody in the movie went to the sink and poured themselves a glass of water, and she said, ‘oh he’s drinking from the sink!’ Because she has never lived in a place where you can actually drink from the sink.” She described how her daughter never leaves home without bottled water, but many other local kids drink from the water fountains at school, which only recently installed water filters. The California state government has promised to help build a $9.6 million water treatment plant to help treat water from the California Aqueduct, which runs close to the town.

Now imagine being so afraid of the water coming out of your tap that you don’t want to wash your dishes, so you switch to paper plates, permanently. It sounds like some futuristic dystopia, but it’s just a small picture of what was happening in Midland, Texas, a midsized town wedged between two larger ones. Midland gets its name from the fact that it was once the midway point between Dallas–Fort Worth and El Paso on the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1881, but the state already had another town named Midway, and so they named it Midland instead. It’s the hometown of former first lady Laura Bush and the childhood home of former president George W. Bush. It’s also located near the Permian Basin oil fields, so petroleum and gas have run the local economy for years.

After Hinkley and Kettleman, I continued to get thousands of emails and to respond as quickly as I could to each of them. One of those emails came in 2009 from Sissy Sathre, a community activist in Midland, who wrote pleading with me to help her neighborhood, where most of the families were afraid to use their water—they were making green ice cubes. Sissy had written more than a thousand letters to her local government, congressman, and legislators, to no avail. I wrote Sissy back in thirty minutes, after her email came through on my phone while Bob was driving us through a snowstorm at 1 a.m. We had just finished a town hall meeting in Michigan for another case and we were on our way to the Chicago airport. She sent me photos of her green swimming pool and told me her daughter was waking up with open sores and skin rashes. She said her neighbor Sheldon and his wife had both been diagnosed with kidney problems. Other folks in her community were dealing with rashes, earaches, headaches, hair loss, and rare forms of cancer. The animals were having health problems too, with residents reporting dogs with multiple tumors. The images were too familiar, and I had a strong hunch that the water was contaminated with chromium-6. Bob hopped on a flight the next day to test the water. Sure enough, it had some of the highest hexavalent chromium readings we had ever encountered in well water, and higher than anything I’d seen in Hinkley.

This case once again opened my eyes to the issue of domestic wells in our country. So many of the cases I work with even today are part of this omission from the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA only regulates public water systems. Many states and towns do not require sampling of private wells once they’re installed, so the responsibility of maintaining clean drinking water falls to the homeowner. The problem arises when industrial neighbors dump toxic chemicals that seep into the groundwater without alerting the locals about it. About 15 percent of Americans (about 43 million people) get their drinking water from private wells, which should be protected from this kind of contamination.

The good news for the forty families in the Cotton Flats community in Midland was that within two weeks of Bob and me showing up for a town hall meeting, state health officials began installing home water treatment systems for the residents. We saw the power of people coming together to get results. It wasn’t about a lawsuit this time; the work shifted to helping community members get organized and united. Sissy and many others went door-to-door, charted the contamination on maps, and put together health questionnaires. It was grassroots organizing at its best, and I know they did a great job raising awareness. But the filters were only a temporary fix as many people reported frequent issues with them. Affected residents got into the habit of filling up white buckets of water to test the color before they would drink it. If that green color came out, then they knew the filters weren’t working. The next step was to figure out where the pollution was coming from, and Bob worked with local activists to identify the largest user of chromium-6, an industrial neighbor just north of and adjacent to the polluted groundwater wells: Schlumberger, an oil field services company.

In a statement Schlumberger said, “Chromium has not been used in any of the processes performed at the Schlumberger facilities in Midland, Texas, and independent water samplings indicate that the source is likely an adjacent site unrelated to our facilities.”

If I had a dollar for every corporation that denied responsibility for the use of toxic chemicals, boy, would I be living it up! Back in 2005, Congress passed an exemption, now commonly referred to as the Halliburton loophole, for hydraulic fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act. At the time, Halliburton was raking in about $1.5 billion annually from fracking and this exemption allowed them and others, like Schlumberger, to keep profits up and keep the chemicals they were using secret. Despite the hush-hush ruling, independent research has shown that hexavalent chromium is commonly used in fracking compounds.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality essentially told residents that its priority was to identify the contaminated sites and provide clean water for people with chromium-6 contamination. They did not pursue further action against Schlumberger or any other potential polluters. The TCEQ maintains these contaminated wells with filters at a cost of more than $1 million annually. The site was also added to the EPA’s National Priorities List of Superfund sites. Much like Hinkley, this site could be contaminated for generations to come.

The Midland case speaks to how so many of us have become complacent. We think some agency is overseeing our health and well-being, but case after case has shown me that they are not. Part of the problem with water is that we don’t see it. We have these incredible water systems underneath our feet, but we don’t think to check on them until the water coming out of our tap is green or smells foul. Sissy, who had become a friend during this case, died in 2015 from cancer. Unsafe levels of chromium-6 have been detected in tap water in all fifty states, affecting more than 200 million Americans. How many more people will we have to lose before we all get motivated to do more? We still don’t have national regulations for hexavalent chromium, nearly twenty years since I first exposed these issues.

ARE WE ASLEEP IN THE POPPY FIELD?

In both the book and the movie versions of The Wizard of Oz, there’s a scene where Dorothy and her friends are following the Yellow Brick Road and come across a poppy field that makes them fall asleep. It’s a trap set by the Wicked Witch to derail them from their cause—getting to the Emerald City.

Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever. But Dorothy did not know this, nor could she get away from the bright red flowers that were everywhere about; so presently her eyes grew heavy and she felt she must sit down to rest and to sleep….“If we leave her here, she will die,” said the Lion. “The smell of the flowers is killing us all.”
—The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900

In the story, the poppies represent the dangers of apathy and complacency. I think that as a society, we’ve been lulled to sleep. We believe that someone else is taking care of things—whether it’s government agencies or large corporate entities. But I’m here to tell you that no one is out there working to save us; we have to start saving ourselves and creating better systems that work for all of us.

Think about the poppies in your life. Are you busy watching the latest reality show on Bravo? Are you constantly checking your smart devices and social media? I’m not here to judge, but take a moment and realize how you might be avoiding the real issues that we face. I’m not saying don’t ever watch TV, but don’t let it take over your life. Stay awake and keep learning. Imagine what would happen if you read one article a day about water issues or talked to one friend about your concerns. Find out when your next city council meeting is happening and bring a neighbor with you. Any little action forward can get you going in the right direction. Now is the time to get out of the poppy field and get into action.

WHAT’S YOUR WHY?

It’s so important to remember your why. For me, it’s my grandchildren. I think of their sweet, innocent faces and my love for them. Then, I think of all the children who need our voices and need us to fight for their future. I think of their happiness and for a healthy, clean world for them to live in and enjoy. It keeps me motivated, especially when the work seems daunting. Think about your why and let that fuel your fighting spirit.