The Shocking Republican Attack on the Environment and Our Drinking Water

Environment News Service / By Sharon Guynup

Ensuring that Americans have clean water has been an effort with strong bipartisan support for four decades. But not anymore.

December 11, 2011  |  WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) -- This year, residents of Midland, Texas sued Dow Chemical for dangerous levels of hexavalent chromium in their drinking water. Chromium-6 is a cancer-causing chemical made infamous by Julia Roberts' film, "Erin Brockovich." There are currently no drinking water standards for chromium-6, and the chemical industry is delaying a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assessment labeling it a potent carcinogen.

 

This is far from an isolated scenario, threats to the public drinking water supply are national in scope. From the 1950s to the 1980s, trichloroethylene, a carcinogenic metal degreaser, lurked, undetected, in the drinking water at North Carolina's Fort Lejeune -- affecting up to one million marines and their families.