A Blountville family stopped drinking their spring water 30 years ago when it started coming out of the faucet red.  A landfill opened about 500 feet from their land shortly before the water turned.  Testing has confirmed the water does not meet safe drinking water standards, but why it’s contaminated can’t be determined.  On top of that, another landfill is proposed by another spring just 500 feet from the property.  Check out the full story here.

Last week EPA officially denied a controversial mountaintop removal mine permit in West Virginia based upon “several major environmental and water quality concerns.”  This denial came in the form of EPA’s rarely used veto power.  This is an incredible victory for local and regional efforts to protect our water quality and natural resources from the destructive practices of mountaintop removal mining.  Check out the full story here.

Well, the legislature has selected its committees.  Some of our longtime supporters are still on them so that’s a good thing.

Senate Environment, Conservation and Tourism

House Environment and Conservation

Ehhhh… not really. The Environmental Working Group published a report on Chromium 6 found in various tap water samples in US cities.  Tennessee was a blank.  So does that mean no Chromium? Well, not exactly. Apparently, TDEC was asked several times by EWG to fill out a form asking about how they regulate chromium and TDEC never responded. That Tennessee is blank has more to do with TDEC staff than whether or not we have chromium in our drinking water.

So back to the original question.  Here’s the long policy explanation.  The rules that govern how much pollution gets put in Tennessee’s water has a list of criteria that must be followed.  For surface waters, Tennessee has a “domestic supply” criterion of 100 ppb (or 100ug/L - same thing) for total Chromium.  That’s the water in rivers that can be used to drink.

There is a criterion for “fish and aquatic life”. The criterion for Chromium 6 is 16 ppb maximum or 11 ppb on the average. This is for rivers that have fish species that you may want to eat and the aquatic bugs that those fish feed on.

Now for the criterion used for what the drinking water plants need to follow - 100 ppb of total Chromium.

Why are fish more protected than humans? My guess?  Fish are in a water environment and therefore are more susceptible to the effects of chromium.  That’s my guess.

We looked at a couple of sites in Tennessee to see what kinds of chromium we find there.  Smokey Mountain Smelters in Knoxville had about 0.001 ppb in testing we did in 2004. That’s very low.  We looked at effluent from a landfill. We found no chromium.  There was some chromium found from the Kingston disaster, but low levels. In short, some of the nastiest places we’ve looked at don’t seem to be a problem.

That doesn’t mean it won’t be a problem in the future, but for now I’m not worrying about it.

RvH

EPA settled an enforcement action against a residential developer, fining the permittee $925,000 for numerous violations on various construction sites throughout 21 states.  Beazer Homes USA, Inc. discharged pollutants to waterways without a permit, failed to provide information in the form of permit applications to the EPA Administrator, and failed to comply with the conditions of their permits such as to design, implement and maintain adequate best management practices at construction site.  See all the details on EPA’s website.