Water is in the news again in Texas. With no end in sight to the worst drought in at least a century, the scramble for groundwater is taking on new urgency. One challenge to groundwater use in Texas is high levels of radioactivity in some aquifers, particularly in central Texas. Unfortunately, the anti-government governor has not done much to address the problem. To further underscore the potential for radionuclide exposure, high levels of radioactivity have been discovered in the pipes, plumbing, and storage tanks throughout the central Texas.
Radiation has contaminated the underground pipes, water tanks, and plumbing that provide drinking water for much of Central Texas and the famed Texas Hill Country, according to concerned city officials in the region who have tested the pipes with Geiger counters.
According to local officials, the contamination comes from years of exposure to drinking water that already tests over federal legal limits for radioactive radium. Of even more concern, they say, is that any water quality testing is done before the water runs through the contaminated pipes that could be adding even more radiation.
Actually, Rick Perry has done less than nothing about radiation levels in Texas drinking water. His administration has tried to hide the problem.
The EPA identified Texas as having high levels of radium-228 and other isotopes in aquifers in a report published in 2000. The agency announced new limits for radionuclides in drinking water with standards to be enforced in 2003. Texas was granted a one-year extension for rules adoption because of the scope of the problem. Here is a summary from a Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) report, entitled "Implementing the national primary drinking water regulations for radionuclides" (pdf):
In Texas, there are approximately 135 water systems projected to be or are currently in violation of EPA's radium, gross α, and/or uranium standard. Water systems have only a few technical options to bring their water into compliance. It is possible for many of these systems to develop alternate surface or groundwater supplies, but for others the only option will be to treat the water and appropriately manage the treatment residuals.
At time of the report, it was estimated that "over 200,000 Texans drink water from public water systems which are contaminated with relatively high levels of radium and other naturally occurring radioactive material.”
The report also notes that the Hickory Aquifer, smack dab in the heart of Texas and primary source of water for central portion of the state, had a problem with radioactivity.
Without a feasible means to treat the drinking water and manage the residuals, the Hickory Aquifer would become unusable as a public drinking water source.
So the state has known about the problem for a decade. Television station KHOU recently confronted Elston Johnson, head of the public drinking water division at the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ), about the radioactivity in the pipes and water using the TNRCC report. Johnson claimed not to be aware of the report even though he had emailed copies to the state's radiation advisory board for recommendations.
JOHNSON: "I don’t know what you’re talking about, haven’t seen it."
In fact, after the interview, KHOU uncovered a letter that Johnson personally signed just last year where he was forwarding the very same white paper for outside review to the Texas Radiation Advisory Board, along with four top drinking water and radiation specialists internal to TCEQ.
KHOU 11 News’ attempts over the last several weeks to follow up on the discrepancy with Johnson and TCEQ officials have gone unanswered.
Lies and stonewalling are pretty good indications that the powerful are desperate to keep inconvenient truths out of the public eye. A report in November uncovered what can best be described as fraud in reporting radionuclide levels in Texas drinking water.
For more than 20 years, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality under-reported the amount of radiation found in drinking water provided by communities all across Texas. As a result, health risks to people consuming the water have been underestimated in many water systems where radioactive contaminants are present.
The TCEQ regulates water systems for compliance with federal safe-water drinking regulations. However, KHOU has learned the state regulating agency consistently took radiation readings it received from the water testing lab run by the Department of State Health Services and lowered the “official” radiation readings reported by the independent lab. The TCEQ would do this by subtracting off the margin of error for all radiation readings it would receive. The subtractions helped some utilities avoid radiation violations that could have forced them to clean up their water decades ago.
After obtaining KHOU obtained TCEQ emails via a Freedom of Information Act request, they filed a new report yesterday showing that state officials, including Rick Perry, were aware of the radioactivity in drinking water.
Here is a transcript of a few excerpts from the video.
You see Brenda's neighborhood gets its water from Harris Country Municipal Utility District #105, where state tests originally showed their water having more radiation than allowed by federal law. But each year, the TCEQ stepped in and improperly lowered the actual test results by always subtracting each test's margin of error, sometimes lowering the result by as much as 50%, often below the legal radiation level. So for years MUD #105 never warned the community with a notice of violation.
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What's worse, the EPA had already told states not to lower water radiation test results in this December 2000 federal rule. And now our uncovered emails show what happened next is not a mistake. Take this note from one TCEQ manager. "Although there may have been some EPA guidance on not subtracting, but this has been the practice in Texas since day one. This option of not subtracting was thoroughly discussed with Commissioners. And so we were directed to maintain the current methodology for subtracting... Maintaining this subtraction will eliminate approximately 35 violations, keeping the water providers in those communities off the EPA's radar. This same report went to the state Speaker of the House, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, even Gov. Rick Perry, yet the practice continued.
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Meet Kathleen Hartnett White, the Chair of the TCEQ water commission at the time the Commissioners decided to ignore the feds. "That was my recommendation, it made incredibly good sense." While White is not a scientist, she says those she did consult with thought the EPA standards were too protective and too costly. "We did not believe the science of the health effects justified the EPA setting the standard where they did." But in fact the EPA regulations have been supported by wide ranging studies like this one from the National Academy of Sciences, written by more than a dozen of the world's top radiation scientists. But White insists, "I have far more trust in the vigorous science by which TCEQ assesses than I do with the EPA.
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And so, trust her, Texas knows best. But what if you are wrong? "Well, if you... there is all kinds of ways..." But what if you are wrong and EPA was right? "Well, I don't see the point... what do you mean?" What if you are wrong and EPA is right about there being a danger? "It would be regrettable."
Regrettable is something of an understatement. Reckless seems like a better word for rancher elevated to regulatory authority over drinking water. Kathleen Hartnett White had regrettable record during her tenure at the TCEQ. She has moved on to bigger and better things in advising the state to ignore the EPA in regulation air quality, water quality, and, of course, greenhouse gas emissions. Not only is she an expert on science and medicine, she is a legal and constitutional scholar.
The state's many legal challenges to EPA's actions of the last two years, of course, are regrettable and a major burden on the private economy of Texas. TCEQ and the state of Texas, however, face a pivotal choice: to legitimize EPA's unlawful demands by acquiescence or to fight to preserve the constitutional and statutory restraints on agency actions. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that federal agencies cannot "commandeer" states-force states to do their bidding. Indeed, states are not branches or field offices of the federal government. The Texas legal battle must be fought or the U.S. and Texas will begin to resemble the likes of Venezuela.
The recent spate of droughts has dried up many surface reservoirs in central Texas, forcing more communities to draw water from the Hickory Aquifer. San Angelo is one of those communities:
Radiation in the water also has been a persistent concern. Fortunately, technology has improved sufficiently that the contaminants can be removed to bring the water well within the federal government’s requirements, and more affordably than a decade or two ago.
Developing the well field lost its urgency after creation of O.H. Ivie Reservoir was approved and then nearly filled soon after its completion in 1990, providing what proved to be false comfort earlier this decade when an extended drought reduced the city’s water supply to two years.
I hope that improved technology to meet federal drinking water standards includes something beyond manipulation of test results by the TCEQ.