Will Climate Change Increase the Presence of Pathogens in Drinking Water?

October 25, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

As storms grow more severe and temperatures climb, contamination of groundwater by animal and human waste could be on the rise as well.

By Kari Lydersen (@karilydersen1), writer, ensia (CC BY-ND 3.0).

Editor’s note: This story is part of a nine-month investigation of drinking water contamination across the U.S. The series is supported by funding from the Park Foundation and Water Foundation. View related stories here.

Many people assume that the water that flows from our taps is free of harmful microorganisms. But each year thousands of Americans in rural areas, small towns and even some cities are sickened by living pathogens that can flourish in untreated or inadequately treated water from private wells and municipal systems.

An increase in heavy precipitation with climate change means the risk of drinking water contamination by bacteria, viruses and other microbes could also increase, especially in places where reliance on groundwater, proximity to agricultural operations and certain types of geology increase vulnerability.

Bacteria like E. coli, Salmonella and Campylobacter, and viruses like hepatitis, norovirus and rotavirus, are all found in drinking water contaminated with human and animal fecal waste. These can cause gastrointestinal and other ailments. For some that’s a matter of discomfort, but for children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, this can be dangerous, debilitating and even deadly.

“We’ve known for years that extreme [weather] events can cause risk for waterborne outbreaks — in developing countries, but also in developed countries,” says epidemiologist Elsio Wunder Jr., an expert in water sanitation at the Yale School of Public Health.

Pathogens in U.S. public drinking water systems cause upwards of 4 million digestive tract illnesses each year. A 2017 study by Florida State University assistant professor of geography Christopher Uejio and colleagues predicted an increase in such illnesses in children under age 5 in relation to climate change, noting the impact on “small rural” municipalities that distribute untreated groundwater in their systems.

Multiple studies have documented the risk of precipitation-driven drinking water contamination in Wisconsin, a state especially susceptible because of its livestock operations and geology. A 2010 report by Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, associate professor of pediatrics Patrick Drayna and colleagues found that visits to a Wisconsin pediatric hospital for gastrointestinal symptoms increased an estimated 11% four days after rainfall.

Rainwater courses through lagoons of manure or manure spread on fields as fertilizer, picking up pathogens and carrying them into groundwater as it seeps down into the soil. The porous dolomite that underlies parts of Wisconsin and surrounding states allows pathogen-laden rainwater to make its way into the aquifers that feed wells and municipal water systems. Human fecal pathogens can also make their way from septic systems into drinking water supplies as rainwater permeates.

“Groundwater was rainfall, it just takes a while to get there,” explains Mark Borchardt, a microbiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), who reported in 2019 that 60% of wells in northeastern Wisconsin’s Kewaunee County were contaminated with microbes found in fecal waste. “Rainfall has chemistries that detach microorganisms. When it touches a pathogen attached to a soil particle, the pathogen can be released and move on.”

In northern climates, frozen ground makes it less likely that pathogens can get into groundwater in winter. But warmer winters expected with climate change likely mean that ground will be frozen less of the time and that precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow, increasing the chances for pathogens to move.

Meanwhile drought — also expected to increase with climate change — can increase the risk of pathogen contamination as well.

“At the most basic level, drought can leave people without easy access to water, and they have to get water from a less-safe source,” says Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “And with less water in the aquifers, [pathogens] become more concentrated,” meaning someone could get a higher dose of pathogens from drinking water from aquifer-fed wells, and the pathogens may be more likely to cause illness when ingested.

Source Matters

Private wells often pose the greatest risk of sickness from pathogen contamination, since there are typically no requirements for testing or treating wells, and it is usually up to an individual homeowner to discover or deal with contamination. More than 13 million households nationwide get their drinking water from such wells.

Well contamination has been a problem in not only the Midwest but in Appalachia and other regions as well, often in areas where residents lack the funds for testing or comprehensive maintenance. The organization Appalac h ian Voices in 2009 cited a USDA study, saying it found “over 50 percent of the private drinking water wells in the Appalachian area of Kentucky are contaminated with disease-carrying pathogens” because of poorly managed “straight” sewage pipes that contaminate surface water. A 2017 report by University of Tennessee registered nurse and then–doctoral student Erin Arcipowski and colleagues reported that pathogenic contamination of drinking water is a serious issue in low-income rural areas of Appalachia. The researchers noted that some residents lack funds for maintaining wells and might rely on “expensive bottled water from a remote convenience store” if they don’t have drinkable water at home. The study found E. coli or fecal coliform bacteria in 15 of 16 sites where water was used for drinking or recreation.

Municipal water systems that tap groundwater can also be at risk, since there are no federal mandates that groundwater be treated before distribution, according to Borchardt. About 95,000 such systems nationwide do not disinfect their water, and about 85,000 people in Wisconsin are served by systems that do not disinfect.

Federal law does require disinfection of drinking water drawn from surface sources, so there is seemingly less risk people will get sick from these systems. But treatment systems can malfunction when heavy rain makes the water more turbid (cloudy).

In 1993 the city of Milwaukee suffered an outbreak of Cryptosporidium, a tiny parasite, that sickened more than 400,000 people with diarrhea and killed 69. A water treatment plant had inadequately treated turbid water that may have been contaminated with the parasite by agricultural or human waste carried into Lake Michigan by rain and snow melt. Between 2009 and 2017, contaminated drinking water caused 339 cases of Cryptosporidium nationwide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pipes can be a problem, too. If the distribution systems that deliver drinking water contain cracks, pathogen-laden rainwater or groundwater can infiltrate them. If pipes carrying sewage are nearby and are also leaking, rainwater can help move pathogens from sewage into drinking water.

“When pipes leak, they don’t just leak out, they also leak in,” Borchardt notes.

Groundwater was a suspected source of contamination by the “brain-eating” amoeba Naegleria fowleri in Louisiana in recent years, which is typically deadly if it enters the nose. If groundwater tapped for drinking water is not disinfected or if disinfection systems fail, Naegleria may be present in tap water. Naegleria-contaminated groundwater can also enter water systems when pipes break. There was also an outbreak in Texas this fall, and because Naegleria thrives in warm temperatures, it may become an increasing problem with climate change.

Reducing Risk

Governments and individuals can take a number of measures to reduce the risk of pathogens in drinking water. State or local governments can impose stricter controls on manure storage and spreading, including buffers and setbacks from residences.

“We currently have industrial-scale ranching and raising animals for meat and eggs, producing industrial-size pools of animal waste,” says Miller. “We need to reduce all those things that threaten our water supply as much as possible.”

Widespread testing can help identify contamination before people get sick. And municipalities that aren’t disinfecting their water can do so with UV light or other systems. Individuals can also install treatment systems for their own well water.

“More people are installing treatment systems in their homes, but systems are quite expensive, it could be several thousand dollars and requires regular maintenance which we people are not always very good at,” says Scott Laeser, water program director of the advocacy group Clean Wisconsin. “Ultimately we need to be focused on preventing pollution from contaminating our groundwater.”

Karen Levy, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, has long studied waterborne disease. She said that while increased rains could mean more contamination risk in the U.S., it’s important people have faith in public drinking water systems, building the will to maintain and protect those systems, rather than turning to expensive and environmentally destructive bottled water.

“It’s really important to not scare people away from drinking water,” Levy said.

Meanwhile the risk of drinking water contamination is just one more reason, scientists agree, that people and governments must do all they can to curb climate change.

“All of the climate models show an increase in the frequency of extreme events, this means at both ends, more droughts and more floods,” says Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The bottom line is it should be a multi-pronged, multi-level approach where not only do we have to anticipate heavy rainfall events that are expected with climate change, but instead of building systems for what we’re used to now, our water systems need to be much stronger.”

Explainer: Who regulates U.S. drinking water, and how?

October 4, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Federal, state and local governments all have a hand in protecting public water systems and private wells from contamination.

Drinking Water — *Photo by LuAnn Hunt on Unsplash*

By Brett Walton, writer, ensia (CC BY-ND 3.0)

Troubled Waters: This piece is part of Troubled Waters, a collection of stories around safe drinking water.

Originally published on September 29, 2020 — Editor’s note: This story is part of a nine-month investigation of drinking water contamination across the U.S. The series is supported by funding from the Park Foundation and Water Foundation. Read the launch story, “Thirsting for Solutions,” here.

Who’s responsible for making sure the water you drink is safe? Ultimately, you are. But if you live in the U.S., a variety of federal, state and local entities are involved as well.

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) forms the foundation of federal oversight of public water systems — those that provide water to multiple homes or customers. Congress passed the landmark law in 1974 during a decade marked by accumulating evidence of cancer and other health damage caused by industrial chemicals that found their way into drinking water. The act authorized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the first time to set national standards for contaminants in drinking water. The EPA has since developed standards for 91 contaminants, a medley of undesirable intruders that range from arsenic and nitrate to lead, copper and volatile organic chemicals like benzene.

In 1996, amendments to the SDWA revised the process for developing drinking water standards, which limit the levels of specific contaminants. Nearly a quarter century after those amendments, an increasing number of policymakers and public health advocates today argue that the act is failing its mission to protect public health and is once again in need of major revision.

*EPA Regulated Drinking Water Contaminants*

Setting Limits

The process for setting federal drinking water contaminant limits, which is overseen by the EPA, was not designed to be speedy.

First, the EPA identifies a list of several dozen unregulated chemical and microbial contaminants that might be harmful. Then water utilities, which are in charge of water quality monitoring, test their treated water to see what shows up. The identification and testing is done on a five-year cycle. The EPA examines those results and, for at least five contaminants, as required by the SDWA, it determines whether a regulation is needed.

Three factors go into the decision: Is the contaminant harmful? Is it widespread at high levels? Will a regulation meaningfully reduce health risks? If the answer is “Yes” to all three, then a national standard will be forthcoming. Altogether, the process can take a decade or more from start to finish.

Usually, however, one of the three answers is “No.” Since the 1996 amendments were passed, the EPA has not regulated any new contaminants through this process, though it has strengthened existing rules for arsenic, microbes and the chemical byproducts of drinking water disinfection. The agency did decide in 2011 that it should regulate perchlorate — which is used in explosives and rocket fuel and damages the thyroid — but reversed that decision in June 2020, claiming that the chemical is not widespread enough to warrant a national regulation.

Two other chemicals have recently advanced to the standard-writing stage. In February, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler announced that the agency would regulate PFOA and PFOS, both members of the class of non-stick, flame-retarding chemicals known as PFAS. For those two chemicals, the EPA currently has issued a health advisory, which is a non-enforceable guideline.

The act of writing a national standard introduces more calculations: health risks, cost of treatment to remove the contaminant from water and availability of treatment technology. Considering these, the EPA establishes what is known as a maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG), which is the level at which no one is expected to become ill from the contaminant over a lifetime. The agency then sets a standard as close to the goal as possible, taking treatment cost into account.

Standards, in the end, are not purely based on health protection and sometimes are higher than the MCLG. These standards, except for lead, apply to water as it leaves the treatment plant or moves throughout the distribution system. They do not apply to water from a home faucet, which could be compromised by old plumbing.

The EPA also has 15 “secondary” standards that relate to how water tastes and smells. Unless mandated by a state, utilities are not required to meet these standards.

Once the EPA sets a drinking water standard, the nation’s roughly 50,000 community water systems — plus tens of thousands of schools, office buildings, gas stations and campgrounds that operate their own water systems — are obligated to test for the contaminant. If a regulated substance is found, system operators must treat the water so that contaminant concentrations fall below the standard.

Omissions and Nuances

That is the regulatory process at the federal level. But there are omissions and nuances.

One big omission is private wells. Water in wells that supply individual homes is not regulated by federal statute. Rather, private well owners are responsible for testing and treating their own well water. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that about 15% of U.S. residents use a private well. Some states, such as New Jersey, require that private wells be tested for contaminants before a home is sold. County health departments might also have similar point-of-sale requirements.

*Primary Water Source for U.S. Households. Source: 2017 U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey.*

The nuance comes at the state level. States generally carry out the day-to-day grunt work of gathering water quality data from utilities and enforcing action against violations. To gain this authority, they must set drinking water standards that are at least as protective as the federal ones. If they want, they can set stricter limits or regulate contaminants that the EPA has not touched.

State authority had long been uncontroversial because only a few states — California and some northeastern states — were setting their own standards. That has changed in the last few years as states, responding to public pressure in the absence of an EPA standard, began regulating PFAS compounds.

“There was always a little bit of state standards-setting,” says Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, an umbrella group for state regulators. “But it’s gone from a little bit to a lot.”

Six states — Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Vermont — adopted drinking water standards for certain PFAS compounds, while four others, including North Carolina and Minnesota, have issued health advisories or guidelines for groundwater cleanup.

States are also putting limits on other chemicals that the EPA has ignored. In July, New York adopted the nation’s first drinking water standard for 1,4-dioxane, a synthetic chemical that was used before the 1990s as an additive to industrial solvents. The EPA deems it likely to cause cancer, but the agency has not regulated it in drinking water. In 2017, California approved a limit for 1,2,3-TCP, another manufactured industrial solvent that the EPA considers likely to be carcinogenic.

The burst of state standards, especially for PFAS chemicals, has raised eyebrows. Some lawmakers worry that mismatched standards are confusing to residents. New York and New Jersey, for instance, set different limits on PFOA and PFOS in drinking water.

“This can create poor risk communication and a crisis of confidence by the public who have diminished trust in their state’s standard when it fails to align with a neighboring state,” Rep. Paul Tonko of New York said during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing in July.

Other representatives countered with the view that the EPA should concentrate on a select number of the most concerning contaminants so as not to overwhelm utilities and states with too many rules that are too hastily put together. Rep. John Shimkus from Illinois, echoing statements made by other committee members, said he does not want a system in which “quantity makes quality.”

Tonko, however, argued that the federal process “has not worked,” pointing to the two-plus decades since a new contaminant was regulated.

This debate, and other considerations like regional drinking water standards, is likely to carry over into the next Congress.

Federal, state and local governments all have a hand in protecting public water systems and private wells from contamination.

Ecological Threat Register 2020

September 11, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Understanding ecological threats, resilience and peace

The first edition of Ecological Threat Register (ETR) by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) measures the ecological threats faced by 157 independent states and territories and provides projections to 2050.

Topics covered in the ETR include population growth, water stress, food insecurity, droughts, floods, cyclones, rising temperatures, and rising sea levels. The report uses IEP’s Positive Peace framework to identify areas where resilience is unlikely to be strong enough to adapt or cope with these future shocks.

The ETR places threats into two major clusters: resource scarcity and natural disasters. The resource scarcity domain includes food insecurity, water scarcity, and high population growth. At the same time, the natural disasters cluster measures threats of floods, droughts, cyclones, sea-level rise, and rising temperatures.

The ETR identifies three clusters of ecological hotspots, which are particularly susceptible to collapse:

The Sahel-Horn belt of Africa, from Mauritania to Somalia;
The Southern African belt, from Angola to Madagascar;
The Middle East and Central Asian belt, from Syria to Pakistan.

These countries compete for scarce resources, which creates conflict. The conflict, in turn, leads to further resource depletion. These countries are more likely to experience civil unrest, political instability, social fragmentation, and economic collapse.

While high resilience regions, such as Europe and North America, have superior coping capacities to mitigate the effects of these ecological threats, they will not be immune from large flows of refugees. Refugee influx, in turn, can cause considerable unrest and shift political systems.

There are 141 countries exposed to at least one ecological threat between now and 2050. The 19 countries with the highest number of risks have a population of 2.1 billion people. Approximately one billion people live in countries that do not have the resilience to deal with the ecological changes expected.

The countries with the largest number of people at risk are Pakistan, with 220 million people, and Iran with 84 million people. In such circumstances, even small events could spiral into instability and violence, leading to mass population displacement, which would negatively impact regional and global security.

The countries at the highest risk also face food insecurities and crisis-level water demands.