7. Saying No to “Unintended Consequences” - Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Emergency and What We the People Can Do About It

7. SAYING NO TO “UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES”

On the western edge of Dutchess County, New York, sits Poughkeepsie—a town of thirty-two thousand people who rely on the Hudson River as their drinking water source. The 315-mile Hudson runs from the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York down through the Hudson Valley farmlands and into the Atlantic Ocean near New York City. General Electric (GE) dumped more than 1 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the river from the late 1940s until the ’70s, when environmental regulations started kicking in. Exposure to these odorless man-made chemicals has been linked to a range of health effects in humans and animals, including suppressing the immune system, elevating blood pressure, low birth weights, changes in thyroid hormone levels, and cancer.

Musician and activist Pete Seeger spent years raising awareness about the contamination, and two hundred miles of the river was declared a Superfund site in 1984, one of the largest in the country. Years of grassroots organizing and political pressure drove GE to start working to remove the toxic sediment in the river. PCBs are just one of the chemicals, along with sewage and industrial waste, that have also been dumped into the river, causing problems for both the wildlife and the people who drink from it. In one of the largest and most complex environmental cleanups in U.S. history, efforts have included dredging—a process that removes sediment and debris from the bottom of the river. The EPA and GE have worked together on this project, and extensive monitoring and remediation efforts continue today.

Poughkeepsie is one of many small towns located alongside the Hudson that depend on its water. The city is known for its prestigious private colleges like Vassar and Marist, its often gray skies, and its high property taxes. For years, an unpleasant smell wafted from the wastewater treatment plant, described by residents as a mix of sulfur and sludge, and it likely contributed to the town’s spot on Forbes’s list of “Most Miserable Cities.” Upgrades at the plant, which included improving the processing system, addressing maintenance issues, and installing a new odor scrubber, helped reduce odor complaints. In addition, the town has become a model for honest drinking water treatment, despite long-term pollution to their source water.

Randy Alstadt, water plant administrator at the Poughkeepsie Water Treatment Facility, has been working diligently since 1997 to provide clean water to Poughkeepsie’s residents. One of the biggest challenges he has faced is controlling disinfection byproducts in the water—a problem now rampant throughout our country. The plant started using chloramines, a mixture of ammonia and chlorine, in 2000 to help control the amount of DBPs (disinfection byproducts) in the water to meet EPA regulations. It was a cheap fix that only required a chemical feed pump, a chemical storage tank, and the cost of the ammonia. At the time, Randy said he was satisfied with the low-cost solution, and if he encountered any future problems, he would explore alternatives.

As soon as the water plant turned on the chloramine, they started to see increased corrosion activity in the distribution system, along with gaskets failing—both at the plant and in customers’ homes. Randy’s customers reported brown water coming out of their taps, no matter how many times he flushed the distribution system. Health problems, such as skin and respiratory issues, showed up too.

“Right when we made the switch, we had people calling and complaining about skin rashes and breathing problems, and they said their houseplants were dying,” he told me.

He was not aware of the health effects at that time, and to be fair, we did not have as much information then as we have today. These issues are consistent with what I’ve seen in so many of the communities that use chloramine today. The difference is that not all water companies seem to be as self-aware and honest as Randy. The water board approached him repeatedly, frustrated with the continuing rust and corrosion in the system as well as the customer complaints, so he hired an outside engineer to study the system and find a better solution. In 2010, he stopped using ammonia altogether.

“As soon as we turned off the chloramine, the brown water went away,” he told me. So did the health complaints. The problem with chloramine, Randy said, is that it masks the problem of organics in the water. It doesn’t get rid of them and it forms even more byproducts, which are currently unregulated. We certainly don’t need more unknowns when it comes to treating our water. Since then, the Poughkeepsie plant has approved funding and finished building a new $18 million system using ozone and biologically activated filters to help remove organic material from the water. The new system not only eliminates the need for chloramines but also reduces the amount of chlorine needed to clean the water.

Bob and I have spent countless hours traveling from community to community expressing our concerns about the use of chloramines. I was also curious about how Randy raised the funds to make the switch. Chloramines cost the city about $25,000 a year, so a new multi-million-dollar system was a big ask.

“It’s a lot of money, but if there’s one customer out there suffering because of my water, that’s not right. I don’t agree with that,” Randy said. “Nobody likes to hear that it will cost more than a million dollars to make upgrades. But I think that the health effects of chloramine don’t justify using it. Once the cost of the upgrade is divided amongst all the customers, the monthly increase is typically not that great. It turns out to be about the price of a meal per month. I let customers know it’s for better quality water, and people can agree to that.”

Randy says he’s a salesman as much as a water treatment operator. It’s all about doing what’s right to get the best quality drinking water to his customers. Think about paying $2 for a bottle of water when Randy can make clean water at a cost of $1 per thousand gallons. Which would you choose?

The new ozone system has been up and running in Poughkeepsie since October 2016. Randy says the disinfection byproducts have gone down to about a third to a half of what they were, depending on the time of year. That’s effective in reducing DBPs and exactly the kind of numbers any operator would hope for. In addition, using ozone has also helped him reduce the amount of chlorine needed to clean the water. While PCBs remain a concern in his area, he says he’s never detected them at the plant.

Randy makes it look easy. He has integrity and used his common sense to provide the safest drinking water possible to his customers. I applaud his efforts and I hope that Poughkeepsie can stand as a model for more cities and towns that are still weighing their options.

Unfortunately, the use of chloramines has soared in the last decade at many water municipalities simply to meet compliance with the EPA’s Stage 1 and Stage 2 Disinfectants and Disinfection Byproducts Rules. It’s worth mentioning that a few cities have used chloramines relatively safely to treat their water—Denver since 1918 and Boston since the 1930s—but these are exceptions, not the rule. No two water systems are the same, and it has worked in these cities because chloramine takes up long-lasting residence in the water, which is helpful to treat water that journeys through miles of pipes. If you don’t have extensive pipelines, you end up with more complications than solutions, as we saw in Poughkeepsie and in many other cities across the country. Drinking water treatment facilities need to look at the compatibility of chloramines with their distribution system and work to predict the challenges and safety concerns of adding ammonia to their treatment plan.

In a paper for the Water Research Foundation, Djanette Khiari essentially summarizes thirty years’ worth of research on chloramines, writing: “Chloramination can be a complex process and improper management can lead to unintended consequences.”

In almost every community meeting where Bob and I have discussed the issue of chloramines, we’ve been met with confusion and resistance—usually in the form of a “plant,” or someone who tries to deny the science and complications we’ve seen in many communities. Randy’s story in Poughkeepsie shows exactly the kind of problems we are trying to help communities avoid. Brown water coming out of taps. Health complaints. Corrosion in the system. Breakdowns in already deteriorating infrastructure. The June 2017 issue of the American Water Works Journal focused on chloramines and confirmed these same problems. The guest editor, Stuart W. Krasner, discussed how drinking water utilities have “cost-effectively optimized their treatment and disinfection processes to control a variety of micro-pollutants to meet state and federal regulations, operational requirements, and aesthetic issues.” He also discusses another downside: using chloramines has led to the discovery of new pollutants, presenting even more challenges to the drinking water industry. One of those health and regulatory challenges is an emerging class of DBPs called nitrosamines (e.g., N-nitroso-dimethylamine or NDMA), a suspected carcinogen and an unregulated DBP. When exposed at high levels, NDMA can cause liver damage to both humans and animals.

“NDMA is preferentially formed by chloramines, where chloramines have been increasingly used to control the formation of the regulated DBPs trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids,” Krasner wrote.

On top of that problem, switching to chloramines can cause lead to leach from pipes, fixtures, and other components in the water distribution system, which means that even if the water is meeting regulations at the treatment plant, by the time it reaches customers it may be unsafe to drink. A 2007 study looked at drinking water sources, blood lead data, and census data for 7,270 children in Wayne County, North Carolina, to determine lead exposure. The county has two main public water systems: Wayne Water Systems, which uses chlorine for disinfection, and Goldsboro Water System, which tried chloramines for disinfection for about seven years. The Goldsboro Water System’s change to chloramines was associated with an increase in children’s blood lead levels, suggesting that the switch could have created an increase in lead exposure.

Even the U.S. EPA considered changing regulations related to chloramines in 2016 amid cities reporting issues with it. A 2009 EPA report says that the appropriateness of using chloramines varies with water types and water utilities and that gaps in research on chloramines exist, including the fact that there are few studies on its impact on human health and few studies on the DBPs that form when chloramines react with natural organic matter in the water, and that chloraminated water may contain higher concentrations of unregulated byproducts. A study published by the Water Research Foundation, a nonprofit that receives funding from the utility industry, looked at data from eleven cities and concluded that utilities should look at other options and avoid chloramines when it comes to reducing disinfection byproducts.

“We’re questioning the wisdom of using chloramines as much as we do in this country,” said the lead author of the study, David Reckhow, a national expert on the treatment of drinking water and the head of the UMass–Amherst Water Innovation Network for Sustainable Small Systems.

As of the writing of this book, the EPA has not changed its stance and still lists chloramine as safe for disinfecting drinking water when used at regulated levels.

TULSANS AGAINST CHLORAMINES

While Poughkeepsie stopped using chloramines in 2010, other parts of the country were just starting to consider it. In 2011 officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, announced plans to start using chloramines as a secondary disinfectant to “meet more stringent EPA requirements,” according to Robert Brownwood, the city’s water supply manager at that time. The switch was reported to cost the city less than $1 million, and Brownwood said that most residents wouldn’t notice the change. In contrast to Poughkeepsie’s title of “Most Miserable Cities” from Forbes, Tulsa made their list of “Most Livable Cities.” The downtown has one of the country’s largest concentrations of art deco buildings thanks to a construction boom in the early twentieth century. The Tulsa metropolitan area is often called “green country,” because of its rolling, forested hills and mountains that stand in stark contrast to other parts of Oklahoma, which look more like the rest of the dry, dusty Great Plains.

Even though Tulsa is the second-largest city in Oklahoma, Jeanine Kinney, who was born and raised there, says Tulsa is a tight-knit community that feels much more like a small town. In fact, she found out about the plan to start using chloramines when one of her neighbors approached her on a walk and handed her a water bill. In tiny print, it addressed the conversion from chlorine to chloramines, assuring customers that they would not notice the change. At the time, Jeanine didn’t know much about her water or anything about chloramines, but said she would look into it, as her neighbor seemed concerned. When she started doing research later that day, she learned about the chloramine water crisis in D.C. and found groups like Citizens Concerned About Chloramine (CCAC), a nonprofit organization based in California. The information scared her, and she said she couldn’t understand why Tulsa was suddenly looking to add ammonia to their water. She wrote me an email saying, “Erin, my name is Jeanine Kinney, I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’ve been doing some homework and research, they are doing a chloramine conversion here. What do I do?” I wrote her back, explaining that yes, this change is happening rapidly throughout the country. It’s the cheapest way you can go. I told her to start reaching out to her city council members.

So she did. She called her city councilman at the time, who told her he wouldn’t touch the subject with a ten-foot pole. It was not on his agenda. Next, she reached out to some locals who knew more about water issues and they put her in touch with Jim Mautino, a council member who was concerned about chloramines because he had a son who could be sensitive to it. As soon as they met, Jeanine was impressed. He had done his homework on the topic and was willing to put chloramines on the agenda whenever he could. Jeanine didn’t stop there. She contacted Denise Johnson-Kula, president of CCAC, who guided her to more information and helped her write a statement she could read at the council meeting to clearly state her concerns.

Here’s the statement she read on October 4, 2011, at the Tulsa City Council committee meeting:

The health department, the water department, and the EPA are claiming that chloramine is safe for all everyday uses, drinking, bathing, and cooking. Yet, the EPA itself admits that it has no respiratory, digestive, skin, and epidemiological studies on the human health effects of chloraminated water. The limited cancer studies on chloraminated water are so few that they are considered inadequate for assessment. Even though these studies show some evidence that chloramine itself is a carcinogen. No determination can be made from those handful of studies. There is not enough scientific data to know if chloraminated water is safe for any uses for human beings.
Thousands of people all over the country, and even in other countries, have reported severe and life-threatening respiratory, digestive, and skin symptoms whenever they are exposed to chloraminated water. These people have proven by avoidance and re-exposure that the chloraminated water is the culprit for their symptoms. They do not have these symptoms when they are not exposed to chloramine and as soon as they are re-exposed their symptoms return. These symptoms fall into exactly the “gaps” in the scientific data about chloramine’s safety and the respiratory, digestive, and skin studies that do not exist.
In addition to the immediate health effects that people are reporting from chloraminated water is the grave concern about the emerging science in the very little-known disinfection byproducts (DBPs) of chloramine. These DBPs are not yet regulated but are turning out to be many magnitudes more toxic than those of chlorine (THMs & HAAs).
Finally, chloramine is much more corrosive to plumbing, lead pipes, and copper pipes with lead solder and brass plumbing fixtures, which contain lead. Lead is being leached into drinking water because of the corrosive effects of chloramine on combinations of these metals. Sometimes the level of lead leached into the drinking water is extremely high. Children from chloraminated water districts are showing high levels of lead in their blood. And for those of us concerned about our environment, chloramine is much more toxic to fish, frogs, amphibians, and to other aquatic life. Water main breaks with water disinfected with chlorine rarely do any damage unless the level of chlorine is extremely high. But with chloramine even small traces from breaks and leaks, as well as from people washing their cars or watering their lawns, can wipe out fish, frogs, and amphibians in nearby ponds, streams, and lakes. Why risk our fragile environment if there are better alternatives?
In closing today, I really want to believe in my heart that each of you nine city councilors took your position on the city council in order to help, protect, and look out for the best interest of the people of Tulsa. I plead with you to help protect the health of Tulsa’s water consumers. Please oppose the use of chloramine as it has not been studied for the very health effects that people all over the country and all over the world are reporting.

Not bad for a newbie water warrior! Jeanine told me that after the meeting the council members looked like their heads were going to spin off their necks. It validated all the points that she and Jim Mautino had been trying to convey. When she attended many meetings similar to this one, council members would approach her afterward and some would say, “You are never going to get anywhere,” while others would say, “Good for you. Thank you for doing what you are doing.”

She just kept thinking that if they won or lost, at least she could sleep at night knowing that as a mother and as a Tulsan she had tried to use her voice to speak up for so many people in the city. She would rather try and fail than not try at all. Jeanine soon discovered the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority (TMUA), a public trust organization created by city charter, made up of seven members—the mayor and six other nonelected officials who were appointed to four-year terms. They were the ones responsible for managing and maintaining Tulsa’s water and sewer systems. They held the decision-making power and the final say for the entire Tulsa metroplex area (more than half a million people). Jeanine was worried about how much they knew about chloramines and wondered if they were taking into consideration people on dialysis, people with COPD or respiratory, skin, or digestive issues, cancer patients, and others with compromised immune systems. What about women filling up their babies’ bottles with tap water? How could just few a people make such an important decision for so many? She started showing up to the TMUA open meetings to get more answers and put pressure on them to make the right choice for everyone.

She also created a Facebook group called Tulsans Against Chloramine (which still has more than eight hundred members) with Meghan Lampkin and Victoria Clarke, who were also very concerned about the water. The women worked together and met with Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr., the TMUA, and state legislators, who eventually agreed to do testing to see if they could switch to carbon filtering instead of chloramine. Once the tests were complete, the city came back saying it was too expensive to go that route. They also discovered that one of the appointed TMUA members owned a company that manufactured chloramine-resistant parts that could replace rubber gaskets and other parts damaged by chloramines—a huge conflict of interest.

Jeanine, Meghan, and Victoria pushed forward with their fight, continuing to collect more supporters and helping to educate more people in Tulsa. They reserved free rooms at the library for group meetings and worked to create informational pamphlets that delivered facts about the switch so that people could learn about the risks associated with chloramines. Bob and I saw how serious the group was getting, and he flew out to Tulsa several times to meet with both the activists and the city officials to try to educate, spread awareness, and create a bridge between them. He gave a presentation at the very first open public council meeting on the topic and they voted 7–2 to hold off on implementation. They were confused by the discrepancy between his information and what the water department was saying so they arranged for Bob to present directly to the members of the TMUA. But before Bob could come back to town, Jeanine got word that the TMUA was trying to push the decision through before his presentation. Bob came to town early and showed up to the meeting, and the TMUA members just about dropped their jaws. Bob called out their behavior, telling them, “I see what’s going on here. You are trying to pass it through before I came to town to give my presentation.”

In addition, Jeanine had helped organize more than one hundred Tulsans to come to the meeting to give public comments, but the TMUA crammed so many city officials in there that the fire marshal told everyone the room was at capacity and wouldn’t let them in. This meeting was not meant for city officials; it was meant for the residents of Tulsa to voice their opinion. The hallway was flooded with people. Bob did give his presentation and showed other reliable, affordable ways to clean the water, but despite his information and the people who showed up, the TMUA voted to approve chloramines anyway. By the summer of 2012 both the Mohawk Water Treatment Plant and A. B. Jewell Water Treatment Plant had started using chloramines, and they continue to use them today. The city could have set an example for the U.S. and proved that they could stay compliant with EPA standards without the addition of ammonia. They may have found a cheap fix but in the long run they have unraveled other problems with water main breaks, needing to replace pipes and fixtures, and customer complaints about the water.

When I recently talked to Jeanine, who now lives in San Diego, she said that even though they didn’t win, she felt like they turned the lights on in her town. She was thankful for the tools she gathered along the way and the validation and support that we provided.

While researching chloramines Jeanine found a list of communities that rejected the use of chloramines:

• Seminole County, Florida: investigated and rejected chloramines.
• Tennessee: discourages its use because they recognize the potential problems but does not forbid it.
• Ohio: requires that the water company prove that they cannot meet EPA regulations without chloramines.
• Leesburg, Virginia: considered and rejected chloramines.
• West View, Pennsylvania: tried chloramines, but had lead issues and now uses it only three months of the year.
• West Columbia, South Carolina: reverted back to chlorine in 2007.
• Charlottesville-Albemarle, Virginia: considered and rejected chloramines.
• Scottsdale and Glendale, Arizona: did not entertain the option of chloramines and went with GAC (granular activated carbon).

She also talked with Randy in Poughkeepsie. She asked him, “Why did you do the conscious thing and decide not to go with chloramines?” He told her, “Because it was the right thing to do and we could do it. I wanted what was best.”

It’s funny how one of the country’s “most livable” cities with all its art, culture, and green space couldn’t do what one of the “most miserable” cities did successfully: give their residents clean, safe water and not make them guinea pigs for a questionable water treatment process.

BOILING WATER IN CORPUS CHRISTI

In the humid coastal city of Corpus Christi, Texas, aging infrastructure combined with chloramine use was just one of the issues causing three boil-water orders in the 320,000-person city in less than a year. In May 2016 a two-week citywide order was announced to residents, sparking both public outrage and the resignation of the city manager. The city detected low levels of chlorine in the system, making it risky to drink. My inbox was once again flooded by concerned residents.

Public utilities issue “boil-water orders” as a preventive public health advisory, usually when heightened levels of bacteria are detected in the water. Boiling water helps kill both harmful bacteria and parasites. Residents are usually advised to bring water to a full rolling boil for at least one minute to kill any unwanted organisms. Many people opt to drink and cook with bottled water during an advisory. Either way, telling residents to boil water before they drink it helps make it safe for consumption, but certainly causes a lot of headaches for consumers and city officials alike. An estimated 1,550 boil-water advisories were issued in Texas in 2015, up from about 1,100 in 2012 and 650 in 2008, according to data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

In the case of this “Texas Riviera” town, the troubles began in September 2015, when the city switched from chlorine to chloramine, which was billed as a “new disinfectant.” But larger problems also existed with deferred maintenance and lack of money to update the system. Another perfect storm! Corpus Christi has 225 miles of cast-iron water pipes, more than half of which need replacement and are vulnerable to decay.

“We historically have not replaced anywhere near what we need to keep up with [the system’s] life expectancy and failure rates,” Dan Biles, a former Corpus Christi assistant city manager, told the local paper. “You’re running on a system strung together and one mistake or problem can be the downfall of the system. Replacing the pipes doesn’t make it invulnerable to boil notices, but it does make the system more resilient to mistakes or isolated issues. And it’s not just a Corpus Christi issue. We, as a society, need to invest more in our infrastructure.”

When my water expert, Bob, visited Corpus Christi, he spoke with city council members, investigated the facilities, and made recommendations. A special city council meeting was called to talk specifically about the water crisis, and at the meeting he told them, “When you see three boil-water notices in nine months, it tells me you’re chasing your tail. You are not unique. This is a problem that is happening across the country.”

The city formed a water task force in the summer of 2016 in response to the boil advisory and other water issues. Bob recommended not only equipment and system upgrades but also more training on how to use the systems in place. In 1996, the city attempted to use granular activated carbon to filter water, but according to documents from that time, it was a failure because employees didn’t understand how to use the product, which caused bacteria levels to skyrocket. In Bob’s words, “They couldn’t have used it in a worse way.” But used properly the same system can replace their current system, which uses an ammonia mixture that can further damage an already ragged system.

The city had more troubles in December 2016 when officials abruptly ordered residents to stop using their tap water altogether due to possible water contamination from an asphalt chemical leak. Unlike the boil-water notices or advisories, residents didn’t have the option of boiling their tap water; they had to cease use of all taps. Local government described it as a “back-flow incident in the industrial district,” and later confirmed that one of the chemicals was Indulin AA86, a toxic asphalt emulsifying agent known to cause severe burns on skin contact. The announcement caused schools and businesses to close and long lines to snake around grocery stores as residents scrambled to buy bottled water. In total, the ban lasted four days but was lifted when test results showed no contamination from the leak in the water supply. This water crisis, combined with the string of boil-water advisories, left many residents on edge, and public officials on notice that they needed to rebuild trust with their constituents.

Despite all their troubles, as of the writing of this book, the city has been listening to recommendations, allocating more funds to the issue, and making progress. Bob believes that if the city continues down this new path, they could have one of the best water treatment plants in the nation, but ultimately their fate hinges on whether they can keep making choices that will create safe drinking water for all and not cut corners with chloramines.

VOTING CHLORAMINES OUT OF HANNIBAL

Hannibal, Missouri, the childhood home of Mark Twain, is a town of almost eighteen thousand people whose drinking water comes from the Mississippi River. “Whiskey’s for drinking; water is for fighting” is a maxim that exemplifies the water issues in this town. In April 2016 two women, fed up with water problems in their hometown, rallied their community, making them the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance aimed at prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water system. The city had begun using chloramines to disinfect the water in September 2015. Bob Stevenson, general manager of the Hannibal Board of Public Works, told The Wall Street Journal that the ammonia mixture helped the city comply with federal and state regulations for byproducts in drinking water.

“In our view, chloramines are like a miracle cure,” he said. “They got us out of a tough problem pretty cheap.”

Many citizens were not convinced that chloramines were the answer to the town’s water issues, as many factors can contribute to water issues, including not maintaining or upgrading the water system, which can lead to a buildup of naturally occurring organic matter in the water, even when chlorine is the primary disinfectant. Local water tests in Hannibal revealed that two disinfection byproducts—total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs)—had exceeded federal regulated limits from September 2011 to August 2015. Long-term exposure to water with high levels of THMs is known to cause liver, kidney, or central nervous system problems, along with an increased risk of cancer.

Just like those in other communities who have considered chloramines to help regulate these dangerous byproducts, the people of Hannibal had concerns about both their health and their water quality. They believed their community should be able to vote on whether they wanted ammonia in their water, and they wanted to explore alternative treatments, such as a granular-activated-carbon filtration system, to fix their water woes. At the heart of this community effort were Kellie Cookson and Melissa Cogdal.

Kellie, a forty-seven-year-old lifelong resident of Hannibal, raised her kids and grandkids there and still owns a popular hair salon in town. She admittedly didn’t know anything about water for most of her life but told me that her house used to stink like a sewer at times and her kids would complain about the smell. The water would also stain her family’s white clothes in the washer. She remembers getting letters in the mail from the Hannibal Board of Public Works (BPW) about issues with the water, but she didn’t pay much attention to them.

“I was of the mindset that they do water, and I do hair,” she told me. “I thought they were doing the best they could.”

She began to take interest in the water in June 2015 when her husband Jay got very sick and was diagnosed with Legionnaire’s disease, a waterborne bacterial infection that kills one in ten people who contract it. Legionnaire’s feels like a bad pneumonia and is still relatively rare—close to ten thousand cases were documented by the CDC in 2017. But incidence of Legionnaire’s is on the rise, almost doubling from 2016 to 2017. A Legionella outbreak with ninety-one confirmed cases contributed to twelve deaths reported by Michigan health officials during the Flint water crisis, with more suspected deaths still in question. Another outbreak at California’s Disneyland in December 2017 made headlines when nine people who visited the theme park got sick, and the number of cases has been rising in communities in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.

Legionnaire’s is not contagious; people contract it by breathing in droplets of water contaminated with Legionella pneumophilia bacteria. Some of these cases can be traced to water systems where conditions are favorable for bacterial growth, such as cooling towers, hot tubs, humidifiers, and large air-conditioning systems, but CDC research has shown that people can easily be exposed to Legionella from hot water that comes out of faucets and showerheads. Kellie still does not know how her husband contracted it. In fact, the only reason Jay was diagnosed was because the doctor treating him at the hospital had recently read an article about Legionnaire’s in Reader’s Digest. Jay had been admitted for pneumonia, but his high fever and hallucinations prompted the doctor to run the test. After Jay was released from the hospital, his health problems persisted. He got pneumonia every month for the next seven months. When he got sick in July, only a month after being in the hospital, Kellie decided she needed to learn more.

“Every time he would get pneumonia, I was fearful that it was Legionella, because that’s how it started the first time,” she said. “None of the doctors around here could tell me anything about it. They really didn’t know a lot.”

She contacted her local health department to see if they would be willing to test the water and conduct a thorough investigation of her home and her shop. She wanted more information so she could protect the rest of her family, but they refused to help. The woman at the health department told her, “Since he did not die and no one else is sick, there’s absolutely nothing we will do.”

Those words just rang in her head. “I feel like they were saying he didn’t matter,” Kellie said.

She wrote the sentence “Since he did not die and no one else is sick, there’s absolutely nothing we will do” on a piece of paper and let it fuel her, over and over. On staying motivated, she said, “If I ever got tired or wanted to quit, I would just read that statement.”

Jay’s life did matter to his family. They had accumulated thousands of dollars in hospital bills and were no closer to understanding where his illness came from or if he was ever going to get sick like that again. Kellie was required to call the CDC to report Jay’s case of Legionnaire’s, and they too declined to perform any investigation. She decided to take matters into her own hands. Kellie started studying water issues to the point where she was up all hours of the night. She converted her daughter’s old bedroom into what she called her “water room.” While researching, she would come across so many unfamiliar words that she had to look them up one by one.

“I would literally put a word on the wall and then dissect it and break it down to the point where the room had words all over it. Every time I would read something new, I would have to go back and look up what that word meant,” she said. “This didn’t come easy to me. I had to dissect six words out of one sentence because it was like a foreign language to me.”

She did most of her research online, reading as many articles as she could find. At first, she didn’t know what to believe. For every article that sounded like chloramines were bad, she would read another describing about how they have been used for years without problems. Then she heard that water expert Bob Bowcock was coming to town, so she decided to attend the public forum and get more information. Bob was invited to speak by another group of people in town who were also upset about the state of their water. About halfway through his presentation, he started hitting on Legionella and Legionnaire’s disease, which turned on a light for Kellie.

“He had never met me or talked to me, so he didn’t know that my husband had been sick with it,” she said. “A lot of people in town didn’t know either. I stuck around after and talked to him. I knew from the moment I walked out of the American Legion that I was going to do something about it.”

Kellie had seen an old friend from school at the meeting: Melissa Cogdal. When she ran into her a few days later at a festival downtown, she asked, “Hey, how interested are you in the water and this whole chloramine thing?”

Melissa, a forty-six-year-old mother of two, describes her family as typical middle-class Americans. She and her husband have been married for twenty-seven years, and they have always been active in their community, though not necessarily political. She had custody of her nephew Christian, who was living with her family, and she was worried about how chloramines would affect his health. His mother had died of kidney disease and he had tested positive for the precursors to the disease. When she researched chloramines, she discovered they could be especially dangerous for people with kidney issues.

Melissa says her water has had a strong smell for as long as she can remember. She recalls getting out-of-compliance notices as well but didn’t think the chemicals involved could hurt her family or her home appliances. She said the notices were written to be very reassuring to the customer and didn’t make the problems seem alarming. The sentiment was “Everything is fine. You can continue to drink your water.” She was very trusting of her utility system at that point. Melissa was also one of the many Hannibal residents who voted on a bond referendum in 2013 to raise money for upgrades to the water and sewage treatment system. They approved a $13 million water bond and a $9 million sewer bond to help finance improvements through low-interest revenue bonds.

“I knew that the issues were being addressed and that these things take time,” Melissa said. But once she got the notice about the city using chloramines to disinfect the water, she was confused. They had voted to spend millions of dollars on upgrades and yet they were proposing the cheapest option. Where had all the money gone?

The women decided to team up and work together on the issue. Kellie called a friend who had a way with words and told her she needed a name for a new water group. Two hours later, they had it: Hannibal to Oppose Chloramines or H20-C. Now with a name, Melissa and Kellie started a Facebook group and began centralizing their information, raising awareness, and gathering supporters. Kellie described to me a lot of late-night phone calls between the two of them, since they both had kids and jobs to tend to during the day. They started attending board of public works meetings and city council meetings. They felt it was important to work with the system and beside their local officials.

“We wanted to work with them and try to get them involved, not go after them,” Kellie said.

Unfortunately, they were not met with open arms. They described their experience at meetings as uncomfortable, with BPW members talking down to them and asking if they had degrees. The board dismissed them as moms, not experts. But the chilly response only fueled their fire and helped them to work harder and find more solid research to present. I can certainly relate to their struggle! For every door that has been slammed in my face, another one gets opened somewhere else. At this point, Bob and I encouraged them not to back down and to keep going to meetings.

Looking for ways to move forward, Melissa, upset, called her councilman, looking for more options. He tipped her off to a new direction that could initiate change when he said, “If you don’t like the answer that council is giving, you can always start a petition and put it on the ballot and let the voters decide.”

Within two days, Melissa had learned everything about how to write and submit a petition. The women could write one to oppose adding ammonia to treat the water. If they could get 10 percent of voters in Hannibal to sign it, then the city council could vote on it. If the council opted not to vote, the issue would automatically go to the ballot as a referendum, which is when the general population can vote on a single issue and get it written into law. Not all states allow it, but Missouri is one that does. Melissa, Kellie, and Jay (and a few others) hit the streets going door-to-door to get the 1,100 signatures needed. They attended big events in town and spent time at the park to connect with as many people as possible. Within four months, they had written the proposal and collected all the signatures they needed. No citizen-driven petition had ever gone in front of the city council before, and they could have voted it in to become a city ordinance. Not wanting to ruffle any feathers with the board of public works, council members let the petition sit for sixty days with no action. They didn’t read it or act on it in any way. By law, the issue then went to the ballot.

Meanwhile, Melissa’s councilman in the Third Ward, Kevin Lionberger, resigned in September 2016. Immediately, many people in town, knowing her involvement with the water question, encouraged her to run for that seat. She thought it was a crazy idea, and that she didn’t know enough to run, but she was angry. She had lived in Hannibal all her life and felt like none of the elected officials cared about her concerns about the water and the health of her nephew.

“I decided to do it,” she told me. “I never dreamed in a million years that I would get it and here’s why: because a seat had been vacated, it was up to the current council members to appoint another member until the election.”

Melissa had spent the previous few months showing up at their meetings and putting them on the hot seat and now she was asking to sit next to them. But the only other people who signed up for the position were even less qualified—one person had just recently moved to Hannibal and didn’t know about the water issues.

At this point it was September 2016, and the election wasn’t until April 2017. Much to her surprise, Melissa got appointed to the seat. When she found out, she was stunned. Her first council meeting was in October and when she ran in the April election she won with about 87 percent of the vote.

Before the election, the Hannibal Courier-Post interviewed her, and this was her response to the question: Why are you running for city council?

Having spent much time at city hall the last year, I decided to step up and serve my community. Having lived in Hannibal all my life I recognize its strengths and weakness. I have felt the same hardships and struggles as my neighbors with decaying neighborhoods, streets, and infrastructure. I have been affected by job loss, drug addiction, and abandoned buildings left in the middle of neighborhoods. I also appreciate the history and beauty of our river town. I would like to help bridge the gap between citizens and administration. Making ideas, concerns, and programs work to improve our community and neighborhoods. Giving the citizens a voice then working together for improved living conditions for our residents.

When we talked more about joining the council, she said she thought people were excited to see somebody who wasn’t afraid to say and do things differently. Melissa said getting appointed gave her slightly more sway with the board of public works too. When she asked for a piece of information, they had to give it to her. But she did have to give up her work with Kellie and H20-C, and she couldn’t campaign specifically for the ammonia issue. The two stayed in touch as friends while Melissa maintained ethical standards for her new position.

By January 2017, Kellie had started to campaign in a big way for Proposition 1, which was essentially a chemical reduction act. Voters would be asked to say yes or no to ammonia in their water. Like other towns, Kellie and others created bright red signs for people to display on their lawns and at businesses that said, “Vote Yes on Prop 1” to help get the word out.

Hosting a town meeting with Bob Bowcock in 2017 at the clubroom of the American Legion in Hannibal, Missouri, to help citizens understand the risks associated with putting ammonia in their drinking water

“Every neighborhood had our signs in it,” Kellie said. “We were just seeing them everywhere.”

Creating a Facebook group was an effective tool for helping spread the word and getting more people to put up signs. While most group members were supportive, Kellie did have to deal with naysayers and those who were not in favor of Prop 1 on the social network too. In every community, you have people who are not willing to look at the gaps in the research and who think that those who oppose chloramine use are troublemakers. She endured personal attacks on her character and her family, but Kellie said she stuck to the facts and did not engage with smear campaigns. Bob and I came to Hannibal for another town meeting to help educate the community about the proposition and offer more facts so voters could make an informed decision. That same week the city sponsored their own forum with an engineering firm they had hired to research the issue. Hannibal officials commissioned a study from Jacobs Engineering, an independent firm, to look at the cost and feasibility of a granular-activated-carbon system to clean the water and help meet EPA standards. The engineers also told residents that getting rid of ammonia would create cleaner, safer water and help extend the lifespan of home plumbing and appliances.

On April 4, 2017, voters showed up to the polls in Hannibal and the ordinance passed by a vote of 1,259 to 894, giving the BPW ninety days to stop using ammonia to treat the city’s drinking water. This shows exactly the kind of impact everyday citizens can have simply by standing up, just like the Margaret Mead quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

“We have worked very hard and have had many doors slammed in our face, but each time, we got back up and proceeded forward,” Kellie said about the election. She and other organizers celebrated at a local restaurant that night, and I posted on Facebook to celebrate with them.

April 5, 2017
You say you want a REVOLUTION…weeeeeelllll­lllll­ you know…In the United States of America, we do it at the ballot box. It’s hard, it’s mean, it gets ugly…but in Hannibal, Missouri, last night it worked.
The Drinking Water Revolution has begun. No longer will consumers just be served unsafe Drinking Water and be told—tough, it meets the regulations. No longer will we be lied to. This is about information. This is about TRUTH. This is about action. Who wants to be next?

Unfortunately, the story does not end here. Justice comes with many nuances. In May of that same year, the BPW board of directors held a meeting to discuss an alternative treatment plan, one that would exclude chloramines, which had been submitted by yet another group of engineers. The proposal estimated that initial testing would not be complete until December and that the whole process of switching away from chloramines would take at least two years. When the board notified the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) about its intent to stop using ammonia as a disinfectant, DNR officials refused to approve it. They needed a water system plan with a proposed alternative treatment process. Even with public support, the city had a lot of red tape to work through to make the switch.

On July 17, 2017, the Hannibal Board of Public Works filed a lawsuit against the City of Hannibal to stop the enforcement of Prop 1, alleging that the ordinance was unenforceable because of its conflict with state law. Not exactly the route I would have chosen for them, but here’s local politics in action.

Hannibal BPW board president Randy Park released this statement:

If the Board removes the ammonia from the disinfection process as required by Proposition 1, Board members could be subject to prosecution and fines and penalties for violation of state environmental statutes and regulations. Also, certified operators that directly manage the treatment system will be subject to suspension or revocation of their certifications from DNR. On the other hand, if the Board complies with state statutes and refuses to remove the ammonia from the treatment process, Board members and employees operating the water treatment and distribution system will be subject to municipal fines or penalties. The Board and its employees are subject to fines or penalties whether they enforce the ordinance or not and the ordinance is unjust.

Melissa said this lawsuit was a pivotal moment in her journey. She had now been elected by the people and was tasked with protecting her constituents. They were depending on her to make a sound decision. It was an excruciating time for her. As a council member, she knew that the lawsuit could drag on for years, and she didn’t want to cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees. On a personal level, she wanted the chloramines out of the water as soon as possible.

“I knew that they were going to try to get a judge that knew nothing about Hannibal and cared nothing about Hannibal to make this decision on everything that Kellie and I and others had done to get the ammonia removed,” Melissa told me.

She knew there was a good chance that the judge could rule that the ordinance or its timeline was unconstitutional. The city now had to hire an attorney because they had the same attorney as the BPW. Once they hired a new attorney to represent the citizens and the city, the council met with him to discuss every possible outcome that could come from the lawsuit. One way forward became clear: if the council rewrote the ordinance and passed it into law, the courts wouldn’t be able to fight it. Melissa felt like that was the only way to keep the fight for clean water alive.

The council kept the Prop 1 wording intact, except that the ninety-day clause was pushed to twenty-four months, along with some leeway for pilot testing, which Melissa tried to fight. They also added a provision that Bob Stevenson had to update the council and the community every ninety days until the new system was in place.

“If we let that lawsuit go on, we’d be nowhere,” Melissa said. “We would all be sitting around waiting for our next court date.”

While Melissa took heat from many in her community, she learned a valuable lesson. Once you get involved in these issues, you realize all the complications in dealing with politics, legal matters, and more. Sometimes you end up fighting for the best possible scenario, and a lot of times it might feel like a no-win scenario. You might have to compromise, but at least you keep going. From the outside, it may look like you are dragging your feet but in truth you are keeping the issues at play. Melissa was able to bring a lot of awareness to the council and to city officials, helping them see another point of view instead of just the one from the utility company.

“Listen, the ammonia is going to be removed,” Melissa told me. “They have until January of 2020 to do it. I truly believe when this is over, we will have the cleanest water in the U.S.”

Bob Bowcock meeting the moms who became water warriors in Hannibal, Missouri, in 2016, and the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance aimed at prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water system

Her advice to others looking to get involved in their community? Be willing to sacrifice time with your family, knowing that you are working to create a better life for them. Be sure to remind yourself why you started in the first place and keep that thought front and center.

“When I started working on this issue, I had always voted and educated myself on the issues, but I couldn’t tell you the difference between an ordinance and a charter,” she said. “Now, I’ve learned so much. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and run for those offices because you might just win.”

On February 20, 2018, the directors of the Hannibal Board of Public Works unanimously decided to move forward with a granulated-activated-carbon system for the city. The new water treatment facility is expected to be up and running by March 2020.

COLUMBIA’S SAFE WATER COALITION

Every Monday morning at 9 a.m., Julie Walsh Ryan and Marie-Josee Brown meet at their local coffeehouse in Columbia, Missouri, just a two-hour drive away from the activists in Hannibal. They are the founders of COMO Safe Water Coalition (CSWC), a group created to discuss and improve their city’s water quality. Since 2009, Columbia Water and Light has used chloramines to disinfect its drinking water and to control high levels of trihalomethanes. The city uses free chlorine in the summer months when the weather is warm, and then switches to chloramines the rest of the year. But both women took interest in their water to get to the bottom of health problems they and their children were having.

Julie and her family moved to Columbia in 2010 from North Carolina. In 2013, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though her cancer is now in remission, she couldn’t help but wonder what might have caused her illness. Less than 10 percent of breast cancer cases can be traced to genetic factors, and she did not test positive for any mutations. But she did take notice when I posted on Facebook in 2015 about Columbia’s water being treated with chloramines to combat high levels of trihalomethanes, which show carcinogenic activity in lab animals. Many factors could have contributed to her diagnosis, but she wasn’t the only one with health issues. She started talking to other women in her neighborhood who were also dealing with breast cancer. Her kids had itchy, burning skin after showers and started having allergies—symptoms they had not exhibited in North Carolina.

When she received a boil-water advisory that lasted for two weeks straight in the summer of 2016, she knew it was a red flag and she committed to calling the city, doing more research, and speaking to the media to get answers about the water. The city said the advisory was related to irrigation, but Julie wanted more information. Meanwhile, Marie had known Julie from around town and was also concerned about the water. Her daughter was dealing with dry skin, severe migraines, and asthma. She suspected the water was not helping with any of it. They decided to team up, start meeting regularly, and make a Facebook group for the COMO Safe Water Coalition, which now has more than 350 members.

Like the women in Hannibal, they made it a priority to work with their local officials to start more conversations about the water quality to enact change. They have attended meetings with the mayor, the city manager, the city council, and the water advisory board. But they also met with resistance. Since Columbia falls into the category of compliance with EPA standards, it’s harder for some officials to understand why chloramines may not work for all of the city’s 120,000 residents.

In a 2016 letter to the mayor, the city’s public drinking water branch chief, David Lamb, wrote:

Currently, 2.5 million citizens, or roughly half of the Missourians who are customers of a community water system, use water that is disinfected through chloramination. Chloramination is a common disinfectant technology used throughout the country and the world. It is the most common solution implemented by public water systems working to prevent the formation of disinfection byproducts.
As previously mentioned, each community has discretion to decide what treatment process it would like to utilize, as long as the technology is safe and will effectively provide treatment in all conditions. It is our opinion that, as long as the city properly operates and maintains its system, chloramination will prove to be an acceptable method for addressing the city’s problems with disinfection byproducts.

Another issue the women hope to change is how the water is classified. Currently, Columbia’s drinking water comes from wells that tap into an aquifer beneath land bordering the Missouri River and is classified as groundwater. But groundwater that sits close to surface water, such as a river, is at a higher risk of contamination and requires more stringent EPA treatment requirements. Julie and Marie believe their water source should be reclassified as “groundwater under the direct influence of surface water.” This switch would help the city as it moves forward with new treatment methods to disinfect the water. Right now, the drinking water has high turbidity, which makes the water look cloudy and is a potential indication of pollution. Turbidity is caused by tiny particles in the water that can come from algae, dirt, minerals, proteins, oils, or bacteria. EPA standards don’t require turbidity treatments for groundwater, but they do for groundwater under the direct influence of surface water.

“We feel it’s very short-sighted to plan for this treatment plant to expand and be upgraded without ensuring that it is built to process water that is classified as under the influence of surface water,” Julie told her local paper.

Setting a regular meeting time has helped the women connect with others in their community who were interested in getting involved or learning more. They have had journalism students, engineers, and other moms join them. It also helped them to connect with Dr. Enos Inniss, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Missouri, who is also a member of the university’s Water Resources Research Center and an expert in water treatment process design and control. He invited them to sit in on his classes so they could better understand issues like how chlorine and ammonia act in water, the difference between groundwater and surface water, and other water quality issues. He also sends relevant articles their way and helps answer questions when they reach roadblocks in their own understanding of these complicated topics. Marie says that many nights she takes her research to bed, starting at 8 p.m. and reading until 1 a.m.

The CSWC women have focused on little wins since their inception. They have researched the wastewater and stormwater initiatives in Columbia and looked into infrastructure improvements and financial requirements. Marie was asked to represent the group on a panel for a presentation by Missouri River Relief. It was a great opportunity to highlight the work of CSWC and show the respect the group has gained in the community. Julie was appointed to a Drinking Water Planning Work Group for the city, whose work helped pass a $42.8 million water bond issue in the 2018 primary, funding improvements to the city’s water treatment plant.

They both continue to make their voices heard in the community by attending various city meetings. They still hold weekly coffee gatherings, where they focus on research and talking with concerned citizens. COMO Safe Water Coalition celebrated its three-year anniversary at the end of 2019. Though they still have work ahead, these partners are energized knowing the work they do is making a difference.

ACTION STEPS

Attend Meetings

As you can see from these stories, one of the best steps to getting involved in local politics is simply to show up to your public meetings. It could be a city council, a board of supervisors, a public works commission, or whatever it is called in your town or city. Decisions about local policies, whether it’s raising taxes, funding new parks, or approving new water treatment techniques, are made at these meetings. We need to show up. Have you ever been to one? They are in there just talking to themselves. Most of the time it’s a small group deciding on issues for the whole town. You need to tell them what’s going on. Tell them what you care about. What would it look like to start showing up en masse to these meetings? I think we would see more democracy in action.

City council meetings are set up to be a public affair, so anyone and everyone is welcome. You can access the agenda at your city hall, on the city’s official website, or often at your local library. You can add agenda items, usually by submitting written or verbal comments to the city clerk. You can also request a speaker card at the meeting and speak about any agenda item already listed (usually you only get a few minutes, so be sure to do your homework before you attend). Remember that every member on your council has been voted in by your community to represent the people, so they are there to listen to your opinions. Most of these meetings are happening throughout the country with too many open seats, but I’d like to see that change. I recommend just going to a meeting to see how it works. You might be surprised how much you will learn about what’s really happening in your town.

You can also create your own meetings. If the thought of researching these issues on your own is daunting, start your own study group with a friend or friends in your community. Each person can take on one aspect of the local water issues, such as understanding the chemicals found in your water quality report or understanding your water source, and then you can report back to your group. Imagine if you were to meet regularly like the women in Columbia and then take informed questions and ideas for action with you to the next city council meeting.

Cut the Noise

The first thing anyone needs to become a water warrior (or activist of any kind) is to assess what you believe and care about, which can’t happen unless you learn to “cut out the noise.” The noise is all around us these days, from what’s happening in the news or on social media to the meeting you had with your boss or the issues your kids might be having at school. We all have a lot going on. As someone who has been at this work for a long time, I want to tell you that you need to engage in self-renewal first. For me, it’s taking the time to look at the sunset or watching my granddaughters play in the yard. What could it look like for you? A short meditation practice? An adult coloring book? Do what you can to hear your own voice, whether it’s playing a round of golf or getting a spa treatment. Take the time to reboot as often as you can so that you can carry on with your cause.

Managing Pushback

You might notice a common thread in the stories of these water warriors. Despite what people said to them or even their own fears and doubts, they kept fighting for what they believed in. It’s so important to listen to your own instincts and not to get bogged down by other people’s opinions. The most important rule when it comes to other people is not to take their opinions personally. Remember, everyone has an agenda.

Usually, the people who are the most critical of my work are the ones who have the most to hide. Think about it. A city like Poughkeepsie welcomes tours of their plant and speaks about how they have learned from their mistakes. But the cities and companies that are misappropriating funds or intentionally covering up pollution or other problems are the ones who will try to take you down. They will use harsh language or personal attacks in an attempt to discredit you. They benefit when no one holds them accountable. I’ve learned over the years that the more pushback I get, the more I know there’s a story to uncover. The truth always comes out, and it starts with your voice. Don’t be afraid to speak out and keep asking the hard questions.

Know Your Why

Knowing what you stand for is one of the most liberating feelings in the world. I would not have made it this far in my career without knowing why I fly all over the country or stay up late in strange cities talking to the local people about how they can enact change in their town. Take a moment now to get crystal-clear by asking yourself a few simple questions and write down your answers.

• Why do I want to join this cause to fight for clean, safe water?
• Who will it impact?
• What vision do I have for myself and my family for the future?

Once you know your why, consider sharing it with three people you are close to in the next few weeks. When you say something out loud, it gives the statement even more power. Maybe they will share their “why” with you too.

Here’s mine for some inspiration:

I am an advocate for awareness, the truth, and a person’s right to know. I believe that in the absence of the truth, all of us stand helpless to defend ourselves, our families, and our health, which is the greatest gift we have.