Superman is not coming
“Superman is not coming”: Erin Brockovich on the future of water
Thursday, April 27, 2017
By Maryam Henein, Truthout | Report
Erin Brockovich speaks at the 2016 Arizona Ultimate Women’s Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, October 9, 2016. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
Come take a ride on America’s toxic water slide: First stop: Flint, Michigan, where two years later, people are still contending with lead-laced water, which was finally detected by the EPA in February 2015 with the help of resident Lee Anne Walters. Next stop: California, where hundreds of wells have been contaminated with 1,2,3-TCP, a Big Oil-manufactured chemical present in pesticides. Travel to the East to see the significant amounts of 1,4-dioxane, an industry solvent stabilizer that continue to pollute the waters belonging to North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Basin. In New York and Pennsylvania, residents are contending with outbreaks of waterborne Legionnaires’ disease (the bacteria grow easily in water distribution systems and often hide in the biofilm of aging pipes). Meanwhile, in June 2016, kids in Hoosick Falls, New York, protested in the streets with placards around their necks that featured PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid, a man-made chemical used in Teflon) levels to denote how much has infiltrated their blood through tainted water. Drop to Houston, Texas, where high levels of hexavalent chromium, the cancer-causing chemical made infamous by Erin Brockovich, are turning up in tap water while thousands of fracking poisons overrun imperiled communities and Indigenous reservations. And, to add to the cesspit, just four days after Trump was sworn in, he sanctioned the $3.8 billion, 1,170-mile Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that will create underground contamination.
Yes, indeed, the story of water in America is dirty and deep. The tale took a toxic turn in the 1930s, during the dawn of the chemical industry, when many horrifying toxins were first being introduced into our landscape. Quality reports on what flows out of American faucets today read like a description for liquid cancer.
And the water we do have isn’t enough. Since 2008, nearly every region of the US has experienced a water shortage.
And since 2015, at least 40 states have been anticipating local, regional or statewide water shortages within the next 10 years, even under non-drought conditions.
“Houston. We. Have. A. Problem,” says environmental activist Erin Brockovich in reference to the nation’s water supply. Brockovich should know. She’s been at it for more than 25 years, ever since her investigation uncovered that Pacific Gas & Electric was poisoning the small town of Hinkley, California, by adding the cooling water biocide Chromium 6 Cr(VI) into the water supply for more than 30 years. The adverse health effects associated with Cr(VI) exposure include occupational asthma, eye irritation and damage, perforated eardrums, respiratory irritation, kidney damage, liver damage, pulmonary congestion and edema, upper abdominal pain, nose irritation and respiratory cancer.
“It’s not just one Flint. It’s hundreds of Flints,” Brockovich, who became a household name in 2000 when Julia Roberts portrayed her in an Oscar-winning film, tells me in an interview. “We’ve already slipped and we’re on the cusp of Third World conditions when it comes to our water supply.” Story continues HERE
