Puzzling - NC Urges 400 Well Owners Not To Drink Water, But City Water Legal W. Similar Contaminants
Legislators probed a question Wednesday that has bedeviled regulators and hundreds of North Carolina households: How can contaminants that are deemed safe in public water systems be labeled risky in private wells?
The state Health Department last spring advised more than 400 well owners, neighbors of Duke Energy power plants, not to drink their water. Most warnings cited detections of two substances that might come from Duke’s coal ash ponds.
But similar levels of the contaminants, hexavalent chromium and vanadium, also appear in the municipal water of Charlotte, other North Carolina cities and across the United States. That water is judged safe to drink under federal standards.
“We’re telling people that their water is unsafe, and now we’re telling them that maybe it might not be,” Sen. Andrew Brock, R-Mocksville, said as the Environmental Review Commission met Wednesday. “Nothing gets more personal than messing with somebody’s water.” The state’s environment and health agencies sparred for months, internal records show, over how to assess contaminants in private wells in the absence of relevant standards.
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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/earth-and-energy/article54589760.html
