CHESAPEAKE
In early October, Robyn Pierce got a call from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with what should have been good news.
" 'Your lead levels came back normal,' " she recalled.
Pierce was perplexed.
Just before Labor Day, she had received a very different message from a city official, Tests by the city and a contractor confirmed the results of a July sampling that detected lead levels in Pierce's well at nearly three times EPA's "action level" for city water systems.
Pierce, her husband and their two sons, ages 9 and 12, live on Murray Drive, just down the street from Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville.
They drank the well water for more than six years - until city officials announced this summer that high levels of metals had been found in groundwater under the golf course. It was contoured with 1.5 million tons of fly ash, a powdery, contaminant-laden residue left from the burning of coal for electricity. Lead is one of a number of contaminants that can leach from fly ash, along with arsenic and chromium.
The EPA water sample and those taken by the city and its contractor came from the same source on the same day, yet the results differ.
"How does that happen?" Pierce asked.
No one has definitively explained the discrepancy.
The EPA arrived at Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville 10 weeks ago to begin assessing for itself the contamination threat from fly ash on the site. On Aug. 25, the EPA began tests on the golf course and on 55 wells near the golf course.
New numbers have popped up on EPA and city Web sites, disclosing some of the EPA's findings as well as those of city consultants who have done more testing on and off the golf course.
In an EPA posting dated Oct. 7, the agency said it was "contacting individual residents by telephone to provide this information and to answer questions."
"Once the validated results are in, the data will be mailed to the residents," the posting stated.
Though a few residents contacted by The Virginian-Pilot said they have spoken with Chris Wagner, the EPA's on-scene coordinator, others said they have not and no one knows of anybody who has received the written results.
"I don't know what the deal is," said Jerry Kanter, a Murray Drive resident, who has e-mailed and phoned EPA asking for his results. "I'm really surprised that they didn't send everything back."
Richard Fagan, who also lives on Murray Drive, said he had yet to hear anything from EPA, despite assurances in a brief phone exchange that he would.
Roy Seneca, an EPA spokesman, said late last week that Wagner hopes to have the written results mailed to residents by Friday.
At an Aug. 20 community meeting, attended by more than 100 people, city officials said lead had been detected in eight of 25 well samples in July tests.
That's when Pierce raised her hand to ask why, in a recent city memo, it was reported that none of the lead levels were over the EPA "action level" when hers was nearly three times that amount.
The next day, Pierce said, she received a call from Dr. Nancy Welch, the city's health director.
"She told me it was my plumbing," Pierce said.
After Pierce said that could not be the case because her home had PVC pipes, Welch asked how old her children were, Pierce said.
"I said 9 and 12 and she said, 'That's more of an adult age,' " Pierce recalled.
"Are you telling me that I can give my children the water from the tap because of their ages?" Pierce said she asked.
"She said, 'Nobody would blame you if you didn't give it to them,' " Pierce said.
Welch said that she stands by her statements.
"In reality, it probably really is plumbing relating to her well," she said, adding that the lead source appeared to be linked with the well structure somehow.
Welch said she could not explain the discrepancy between the city's and the EPA's results.
"I don't know which result is correct, but I do know that whatever the results are, they are related to the structure of the well and not the golf course because the water coming to the house is normal," she
said.
Pierce said her well has been tested six times - in late 2001 and five times this year. Lead has been detected in the last four tests, Pierce said, three times at high levels.
"If the lead source is my well, why don't all the water samples taken show elevated levels of lead?" Pierce asked.
Baseline testing by the golf-course developers of 40 wells near the golf course - in late fall of 2001, before any fly ash was placed there - detected lead in 17 of them. Pierce's home was not one of them.
"Any lead is a concern," said Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech professor and widely known expert on lead in water.
Asked about the contradictory results from Pierce's well, Edwards said nothing could be ruled out.
"A single sample from the well with a low level of lead does not mean that the aquifer is not contaminated," Edwards said.
On the advice of an epidemiologist from the Centers for Disease Control, Pierce took her two sons for blood tests, which came back negative.
"Don't you think I didn't just about jump out of my skin?" she said, recalling the moment she heard the expert's advice. "You don't play around with your babies."
Pierce still worries about the safety of her water and awaits a meeting with EPA and city officials to try to reconcile the conflicting lead results from her well.
For now, the family makes up to three trips a week to a nearby church, from which they ferry city water back home in a half-dozen gallon jugs.
"That's what we cook with, that's what we eat with," Pierce said.
Tap water is used for everything else, from dishes to laundry to brushing teeth. There is only one filter in the home - under the kitchen sink - for cold water, Pierce said.
"As a layperson, it's incredibly overwhelming," she said. "How does the average person walk away with a clear grasp of what's going on in their own backyard?"
Lizz Gunnufsen, a city spokeswoman, stated in an e-mail that city officials are following up on Pierce's results and any others that raise questions.
In late August, the EPA retested the three original groundwater monitoring wells from the golf course that generated the startling results announced by the city this summer. Findings then included arsenic at an average of more than eight times the municipal drinking water standard and lead at an average of more than five times the standard, according to city officials.
The EPA, which the city asked to intervene based on those findings, came up with significantly lower results.
Arsenic levels dropped from an average of 82 parts per billion to the single-digit range and lead fell from an average of 84.2 parts per billion to slightly below or just above the EPA action level of 15 parts per billion.
"At this point, nothing is jumping out at us as an imminent threat to public health or the environment," said David Sternberg, an EPA Region 3 spokesman, based in Philadelphia.
The same week the EPA resampled the monitoring wells, the city's contractor retested one of them - "MW-3" - which had produced the highest contaminant readings.
The new results seem as contradictory to its own earlier readings and those of EPA as Pierce's. The first round of testing on MW-3, taken May 20, showed lead at 106 parts per billion.
On Aug. 25, two samples from the same well found the highest lead level was 19.4 parts per billion.
In the EPA's samplings of all three wells - taken four days later - lead peaked at 16.2 parts per billion.
"We're not sure why the results are different now than they were in the past," the EPA's Seneca said. "This data will be forwarded to our site assessment branch; they will determine if there's a need for further testing."
While city and federal officials try to reconcile their findings, new groundwater data from three offsite sources is available on the city's Web site.
In late July, the city's consultants collected water samples from the nearby fire station and from two new monitoring wells installed on the west side of Centerville, near Etheridge Manor Boulevard.
Samples from the fire station and one of the new wells showed lead at about 20 parts per billion - over the EPA's "action level."
EPA's late-August tests included setting up 13 "monitoring points" around the perimeter of the golf course, each no more than 10 feet deep, said Wagner, the EPA's on-scene coordinator.
Arsenic exceeded the EPA drinking-water standard in three of those samples - the highest at 19.8 parts per billion. The EPA, however, stressed that these readings came from monitoring points - not drinking water wells.
Lead, which peaked at 28.3 parts per billion, was found at five of the monitoring points at levels over the agency's "action level" of 15 parts per billion, which triggers a response by city-water systems when more than 10 percent of samplings exceed it.
"It doesn't raise any need for us to take immediate action," Wagner said in a recent interview, adding that the lead levels were still relatively low.
Technically, EPA has no standard that pertains directly to well water.
Because the samplings were taken at such shallow depths, they cannot be compared with any results from residential wells, which are typically much deeper, she said.
But in the end, the complex science and various possible explanations have left Pierce and her neighbors confused.
"You become desensitized to it until you're the one facing it front and center."
Robert McCabe, (757) 222-5217, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com
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Governments DO lie to their people
For decades, the people of the Coeur d'Alene River valley in North Idaho were told they didn't have anything to worry about from the silver mines and the Bunker Hill smelter near Kellogg, Idaho. But children came down with lead poisoning. Illnesses caused by heavy metals were and are prevalent in the valley. The hills and mountains around the smelter were barren of trees. But time and time again, the people were told they didn't have anything to worry about. Now, the smelter is gone, much of the ground has been capped over to prevent further contamination, even the abandoned rail lines have been capped because of the amount of dangerous metals that fell from the rail cars. Governments WILL and do lie to their people to protect tax generating interests and to prevent them from having to fork out money to take care of those who become ill. Fly ash IS dangerous unless it is properly contained. Independent testing is the only way.
Man, lead is no joke!
Really dangerous. If I were those people, I'd mark my house 50% off and get out ASAP. Chesapeake is nasty anyway. Anyone remember a few years back, once again in Chesapeake, in some new housing development they found an underground dump?
No news
Once again another article that tells us nothing. How about investigateing why 17 wells had lead BEFORE the fly ash was in place. Technically, EPA has no standard that pertains directly to well water. Then why are they testing the wells and giving preliminary reports? Have any of the homeowners had their wells tested by an independent company? If not, why not? Seems like the Pilot is trying to make this more of issue than it is.
Preliminary Sampling Data
For the life of me I can't figure out who is running this show. Water sampling data can be very complex and for the City and EPA to both be sharing preliminary data is not only misleading it is foolish. Sampling data has many variables that need to be considered before releasing results, including how the sample was collected, how long the water ran before it was collected, if it was filtered before filling the bottle, how it was handled, what specific methods were used to analyze the sample, and what form of lead is present. In addition, test results will differ depending on how the well is constructed, how deep the well is, and how often it is used. Lastly, the subsurface soils affect how water and contaminants flow underground and make their way to some wells and not others. All these things are considered by consultants when analyzing data. Without considering all these things you're potentially comparing apples and oranges.
Let me finish
Below is the remainder of my previos post.
It would also be a good idea to have a third party lab run the exact same analysis on the same sample. That way there are 3 labs running the same test using the same methods.
Testing Differences
Not knowing the actual testing procedures used, there may have been different methods used in the analysis which could explain varying results. Also, one big problem here is that there is no background data for the sites for these constituents. In many states that have coastal plain sediments like this area of VA, arsenic is naturally occurring. By having no ground water data for arsenic before the construction of the golf course regulators are at a disadvantage. In addition, the only Health Department testing required prior to placing a private drinking water well in service is for coliform, not heavy metals or anything else... that is state law AND the test is never required again during the service of the well nor are any other tests required. SO when you have a new well installed and the health department says it is ok to place in service all they are saying is that there is no coliform bacteria in the well. To properly analyze the ground water results all agencies testing need to use the EXACT SAME lab methods, take the sample from the same location and then compare. This includes all solutions used in the analysis such as preservation methods. It would also be a good i
Get Real!
Government regulatory agencies have no reason to lie to the citizens. They don't have a vested interest. They are not legally liable in any way. They are not subject to any monetary damages. WHY WOULD THEY LIE?
As times goes on, it becomes all the more apparent that there is no health problem at that site. McCabe looked at other fly ash sites and thought he had a smoking gun here. As far as lead goes, how many homes of that vintage have lead in their plumbing?
Absent any data that points to a health problem, all of a sudden there's testing discrepancies! What's wrong, McCabe, things not falling together like you'd hoped? Are the facts getting in the way of the story? So far, the only moral to this story is that equal oversight should be applied to all uses of fly ash. Other than that, it's been a textbook example of advocacy journalism. The Pilot should be sued for all the unnecessary anguish they have caused by hyping this story.
If their lips are moving, their mouths are lying
"As a layperson, it's incredibly overwhelming," she said. "How does the average person walk away with a clear grasp of what's going on in their own backyard?"
They don't, and that's what all government officials from the local level to the federal level are counting on, our lack of knowledge on the subject matter, so they can bamboozle us. When it comes to our personal safety from man made environmental toxins, we cannot trust a single word from any type of government official, they are all paid to lie, and they lie while looking us in the eyes.
Water-test discrepancies leave residents in limbo
I don't understand what the issue is. Unless you are drinking the water, eating the grass, or smoking the weeds big deal. It looks like another issue of residents trying to find someone to blame and for a slick lawyer to jump in and file a class action lawsuit.
test it yourself!
The governments and agencies around here lie all the time.
SEVA is heavily polluted and everyone from city officials to the local military lies about it.
I tested the water near where I worked after the city and the EPA said the water was fine, and they were lying: it was full of heavy metal and excessive amonia.
Test it yourself to be sure.