WATER, like air, is one of the basic elements of life. It makes up two thirds of our body mass, and while we can survive without food for two weeks or more, without water we would perish in a matter of days. But water is more to us than mere survival. It is our fun, our recreation and relaxation. Water draws us like a magnet whenever we want to unwind, get away and enjoy ourselves. Three quarters of our planet is covered with water. just as we have assumed that our vast atmosphere could absorb, dilute, and detoxify whatever we dumped into the air, we have treated our seemingly boundless waters as if they had an unlimited capacity to wash away anything that we throw into them, be it tons of untreated sewage, solid garbage, or barrels full of toxic industrial wastes. For many years, this worked ... or at least seemed to work. The waters are so vast, so deep, and flowed so quickly that they did in fact detoxify just about anything that we could throw into them. The "dilution solution to pollution" appeared to be a good one. So we dumped into the rivers, into the drains, and into the oceans, and because it all appeared to wash away, we thought that was the end of it.

THE LONG ARM OF POLLUTION

The pollution of our waters is another example of society's shortsightedness and unwillingness to deal responsibly with its own waste. Although the problem is only recently receiving the front-page coverage it deserves, water pollution is almost as old as man himself. The sacred Ganges River is among the most revered of rivers and the most polluted. The Hindu religion views the Ganges as bringing spiritual cleanliness through daily immersion rituals. In the meantime, secular India dumps about eighty-five billion gallons of raw sewage into the sacred waters each year.

 Although many Americans may not be aware of it, or prefer not to admit it, most of the cities in this country dump raw or inadequately treated sewage, solid garbage, and industrial and hospital wastes into our oceans and waterways in manners that are not all that different from those taking place on the banks of the Ganges. The only difference may be that we have long ago abandoned bathing and swimming in those waters because we realized the extent to which we had fouled them. Who in their right mind would consider swimming in the Hudson or East rivers that surround Manhattan, for instance? There once was a time when this would have been safe. Since World War II, there has been a massive increase of chemical waste from the processing of steel, paper, textiles, food, electrical and transportation equipment, petroleum, and synthetics such as plastics, fibers, and detergents. During the war, the need for an abundant and cheap supply of goods led to the manufacture of synthetic alternatives, most of which were derived from petrochemicals, the byproducts of oil refining. Since then, the petrochemical industry has expanded exponentially and is responsible for a major portion of today's chemical pollution. In 1940, for instance, some twenty-five million gallons of the solvent benzene were produced. Today, annual production has reached almost two billion gallons. Production of solvents as a whole increased 700 percent in the fifteen years between 1968 and 1983, while plastics increased by 2,000 percent. Chemical production is estimated to contribute 60 percent of the country's hazardous waste. 

According to EPA estimates, about one thousand new chemicals are put on the market each year. Of the more than fifty thousand chemicals now in existence, the agency deems about thirty-five thousand, or 70 percent, to present a danger to human health. We know dangerously little about the twelve thousand potentially toxic chemicals now in wide use. The chemical industry itself provides no information. Hiding behind the veil of trade secrets, it tells authorities nothing about the chemical characteristics of the contaminants it contemptuously discharges into the nation's waters. We learn of the dangers only when they become manifest. 

You can stand on the banks of the Potomac, in the center of our nation's capital, and watch the sewage ferment bubble up from the bottom of the river. The bed of the Potomac is composed of fourteen feet of odoriferous sludge. Its waters are green and brown: green from the rotting algae caused by massive eutrophication; brown from the sludge, an amalgam of all varieties of waste and garbage dumped along the entire course of the river. 

It has been many years now since we have seen that dilution will not solve pollution in our lakes and streams. While it still may be possible to find patches of clean air, there are very few large bodies of clean water left in the United States. As early as 1953, Lake Erie was so contaminated that even mayflies could not hatch on its surface. The lake is so polluted that its beaches have long been declared unsafe. Although many citizen and environmental groups have made significant inroads in cleaning up the Great Lakes, their efforts are a constant uphill battle. The EPA only sets standards for a very few chemicals, and the chemical industry is very creative in its ability to come up with new substances not covered by federal regulations. Furthermore, we are only just beginning to get a handhold on the effects these chemicals have, not simply on human health, but also on the wildlife inhabiting the bodies of water where dumping has taken place. A 1987 study commissioned by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources revealed birth defects and reproductive failures in a number of species of birds feeding on fish in the Great Lakes. According to James Ludwig, a wildlife specialist who conducted the study, these findings suggest that toxic threats to humans in the area may have been overlooked. Ludwig believes the state puts too much emphasis on levels of toxins, and not enough on their effects. In June 1968, the Cuyahoga River, which runs south from Lake Erie at Cleveland, burst into flames. Thousands of gallons of oil, the source of which has never been determined, suddenly caught fire, causing extensive environmental damage. For years preceding the fire, the ugly and polluted Cuyahoga had been a joke in Cleveland. Local radio disc jockeys did regular comedy routines about the river. When it caught fire, the ultimate punch line was delivered. 

THE DEATH OF OUR OCEANS, BEACHES, AND MARINE LIFE

The oceans and beaches of America are not faring any better than its freshwater streams. The summer of 1988 brought all-time record waves of garbage, hospital waste, and raw sewage onto our nation's beaches, causing many of them ' to close. A 1987 federal study revealed that harbors around the country are filled with pesticides from agricultural runoff, industrial chemicals, and sewage that concentrate and collect to pollute the sediment. Among the toxic accumulation are pesticides such as the banned DDT and known carcinogens like PCBs. The study also revealed significant levels of these toxic chemicals turning up in the groundwater supplies of harbor cities. Levels of pollution were found to be the worst in the harbors of Salem and Boston, Massachusetts, and Raritan Bay between New York and New Jersey, but the rest of the country's harbors still have unacceptably high levels of contamination. The highest levels of DDT in the country were found in California's San Pedro Canyon, the result of years of dumping industrial waste into the Los Angeles harbor by a DDT manufacturer. 

• Sea turtles regularly mistake plastic bags for the jellyfish that are their favorite food. They die because they can neither ingest anything else nor expel the poisonous material that clogs their digestive systems. 
• Entanglement in six-pack holders and other plastics has contributed to an annual decline of 4 to 8 percent in the fur seal population of Alaska's Pribilof Islands.
• In the digestive tract of a single sea turtle found dead on a beach in Hawaii, medical researchers found a golf tee, a pocket comb, a plastic flower, pieces of monofilament fishing line, part of a bottle cap, an eight inch square plastic bag, and dozens of other pieces of plastic.

Where does all this plastic come from, and is it really such a problem? The world's fleet of more than 70,000 merchant vessels dumps at least 450,000 plastic, 300,000 glass, and 4.8 million metal containers into the sea every day. This country's commercial fishing fleet of 130,000 ships yearly discards 245 tons of nets, ropes, traps, buoys, packaging material, and other plastic items into the ocean. More plastic garbage is tossed overboard from the navy's 600 vessels and from cruise ships, recreational boats, and offshore oil rigs. 

Throughout the summer of 1988, New York and New Jersey newspapers were running daily stories about the ever more visible results of pollution. The severity of the problems off the Jersey shore invited even tabloid coverage, and for a change, the blunt sensationalism did not seem out of place. At the height of the summer, the New York Post, one of the most popular tabloids, did a story on a crusty sea captain and his observations of the changes that had taken place in areas around the sewage discharge pipes off the coast of New Jersey. 

"Twenty years ago," says Charlie Stratton, a veteran seaman interviewed by the Post, "dolphins were jumping. We had sea turtles, rainfish, mackerel, all sorts of tuna. Now there's not even jellyfish." 

Today, this is a dead sea. 

New Jersey has passed legislation ending the dumping of sewage sludge off its coast by 1991, and also calling for increased surveillance of illegal ocean dumping and five year prison sentences for violators. The long overdue law is welcome, but many fear that without a more comprehensive approach to ocean pollution, the law stands little chance of successfully dealing with the problem.

THE SEWAGE DILEMMA

The dumping of raw sewage into the world's rivers and oceans occurs almost everywhere that you find civilization. Around the Mediterranean, 70 percent of the coastal cities dump untreated sewage directly into the sea. As recently as fifteen years ago, New York City's treatment plants discharged 450 million gallons of raw sewage a day into New York Harbor, the Hudson River, and other local waters. Since that time the city has invested $2.5 billion in treatment plants that city officials claim have limited the raw sewage to 1 million gallons a day, but this only begins to dent the problems of sewage pollution in the area. 

There is also the problem of sewer system design and the questionable efficiency of current treatment systems to remove polluting materials from the waste adequately. In New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, for instance, many sewer systems are combined with storm drainage networks. According to R. Lawrence Swanson, director of the Waste Management Institute at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, with this system, "It takes a rainfall of only a few hundredths of an inch per hour for an hour or more in the metropolitan area for sewage treatment plants to be bypassed." What this means is that with very little rain, sewer networks become backed up, and rain diluted sewage, instead of ending up at the treatment facility, is dumped in an untreated state directly into the area's waterways. Municipal estimates for New York City put the level of sewage overflow at about sixty five billion gallons per year. 

Part of New York City's problem stems from a sewer system dating from the early 1880s that was never designed to deal with the number of people now living in the city. While New York's problem may be more serious than that of other regions, rapid development and poor city planning, particularly in coastal regions, make this a nationwide problem. People do not like to think about waste and sewage. Developers do not want to pay for the new systems that are realistically required with the construction of new communities. Municipal planning officials often give way to developers' demands, not wanting to squabble about waste. When problems become apparent, the price tag of remedying the situation is so exorbitant that taxpayers either cannot or do not want to spend the money to build a new infrastructure. 

New York City is just one case in point. For quite a few years now developers have been allowed almost carte blanche in the construction of high density residential and office buildings. If they have paid at all for rebuilding the city's aging and overtaxed infrastructure, it has been minimally. Environmentalists believe that to address the problem responsibly, a new system must be built that separates sewage from drainage water. City officials dismiss this immediately as too complicated and costly. Instead, high priced stopgap plans that are almost absurd because of their shortsightedness are proposed and adopted. The city currently has a ten-year, $1.2 billion sewer rehabilitation program on the table. Under consideration is a series of underground tanks to hold sewage and drain water following storms. Screens would be placed over the sewage discharge points to prevent solid matter from entering the waterways. 

The simplemindedness of this approach is understandable given the manner in which sewage issues have been handled up until now. The $2.5 billion spent by New York City during the past fifteen years for treatment plants addresses only a fraction of the problems caused by sewage. Not only are sewer networks insufficient to handle the city's volume of waste, the sewage reaching the treatment facilities hardly leaves those facilities in a clean state. Most sewage treatment plants, in this country and around the world, remove and treat only the solid portions of the waste. Once treated, it is released into the waterways and oceans as a thick dark sludge. Liquid waste is allowed to pass through these plants without any alteration. These liquids are filled with all types of pollutants, from bacteria and industrial waste to agricultural runoff filled with eutrophying nitrates and phosphates. It is this portion of our sewage waste that is believed to be the primary culprit in the widespread algae blooms that are choking off so many of the world's coastal areas and causing such widespread devastation to marine life.

OIL SPILLS

Just six months after the end of the disastrous summer of 1988, America watched in horror as the Exxon Valdez emptied ten million gallons of crude oil into the waters around Prince William Sound in Alaska, fouling, perhaps irreparably, eight hundred miles of what had been one of the world's most unspoiled and picturesque coastlines. The accident, the largest oil spill in U.S. history, followed closely on the heels of two other major oil disasters. In December 1988, Grays Harbor in Washington State was the site of a three hundred thousand gallon accidental spill. On January 28, 1989, a calamity began on the opposite pole when the Argentine ship Bahia Paraiso struck a reef and began leaking three thousand gallons of fuel and crude oil a day into the previously pristine waters surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula. 

The magnitude of these disasters and their rapid succession sent shock waves through the American public, which for years had placed blind trust in oil company assurances that such things could never happen. But they did, and particularly in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, investigation into oil company precautions revealed a cavalier approach to safety. 

As far back as the 1970s, Exxon and the other companies that own the Alaska pipeline assured environmentalists that they had a cleanup plan that could contain a major spill within five hours of a rupture. But in 1981 the industry disbanded a twenty member emergency team prepared for round the clock responses to oil spills. 

In the case of the Valdez, Exxon's cleanup equipment was totally inadequate, giving the leaking oil two full days to spread before anything significant was done. This lack of preparation and foresight was confirmed on television and press interviews with Exxon Chairman L. G. Rawl, who made the shocking admission that the Alaska Pipeline Service Company, a consortium of oil companies, including Exxon, responsible for spill containment, had never been prepared to handle a spill of this magnitude. 

Alaska state officials, environmentalists, and fishermen have believed since the early seventies that a tanker accident in the sound was inevitable. To combat these concerns, Alaska and federal officials promised in 1972 that the tanker fleet operating out of Valdez would be specially designed to minimize spills by incorporating such safety features as double bottoms and protective ballast tanks. 

By 1977, however, Alaska had persuaded the coast guard that the safety features were not necessary, so most ships, including the Exxon Valdez, were not outfitted. At the time of the accident, Alaska's containment team consisted of a single barge loaded with seven thousand feet of barrier booms. With the Valdez measuring almost one thousand feet itself, the seven thousand feet of booms readily deployable could barely encircle the giant ship, much less a sizable stick. 

Evidence such as this left many infuriating questions unanswered, the most obvious being that if oil companies are not prepared to handle a spill of this magnitude, or anything close to it, why did they not limit their shipments to cargos that could be handled if spilled? 

Perhaps we all would have been more sympathetic to Exxon had the spill been the result of a real accident, what lawyers call force nature or "acts of God," like a totally unforeseeable storm or even an uncontrollable equipment failure. But the Exxon accident brought to our attention a picture of corporate mismanagement and recklessness. What else could explain a drunken captain, with a history of alcohol abuse, driving a 978 foot, cargo laden oil tanker onto a shallow reef? 

The Exxon oil disaster could hardly have occurred at a worse place. Throughout the media coverage, the pristine beauty of Prince William Sound was stressed. The postcard view of evergreens and mountains against a dazzling blue sky featured prominently in all the reports. Crude oil, carried in by Arctic tides, left a twelve foot wide brown carpet along the desolate beaches. 

The toll on animal life in the area was enormous. At least eighty-two sea otters were brought to a makeshift field hospital in Valdez. They were nearly frozen because a coat of oil had destroyed the insulating ability of their fur. Animals dead on arrival steadily filled up a white refrigerated truck trailer parked nearby. A preliminary beach survey indicated an average of eighty oil coated ducks and other kinds of birds every one hundred meters. Bald eagles have scavenged the contaminated birds, and they are now at risk. 

Crude oil contains substances that are either poisonous or carcinogenic. The danger from contaminated fish prompted state officials to announce that this year's herring season, expected to bring fishermen $12 million in revenues, would be canceled. Salmon fisheries are also in danger. 

Studies by the National Academy of Sciences and other groups have found that the largest single source of oil pollution in ocean regions is crude oil tankers discharging tank flushings and ballast. In the North Sea alone, it is estimated that four hundred thousand tons of oil are released into the water each year from offshore oil rigs and ships emptying their tanks at sea. An investigation of petroleum pollution in the Gulf of Mexico has revealed the Gulf to be among the most polluted major bodies of water in the world. A Florida survey team said that oil from blowouts of offshore wells such as the Ixtoc 1, which spilled 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf in 1979, account for only a small percentage of oil identified in the region. 

Tank flushings and ballast water discharges by tankers taking on crude oil in Alaska are adding thirteen million gallons of contaminated water to the sea each day. A water treatment plant designed to remove oil and toxic pollutants from the tankers' discharges turned out to be a fraud. The company maintained no pollution control monitors, and its managers gave false testimony about potential hazards and tampered with environmental impact statements to make the company appear to be doing a better job than it was. 

Though our energy hungry world needs petroleum, and America needs its domestic sources, we need to go after our fuel in environmentally responsible ways, and move toward alternative forms of energy. it is only through decreasing our fuel consumption that we can slow down oil drilling and preserve our oceans and beaches. We must also push our legislators to take a long term approach to all issues relating to oil, be they conservation, drilling, or dumping.

DRINKING WATER

Up until recently, an abundant supply of safe drinking water has been taken for granted by most people. Today, hazardous waste sites are leaking and contaminating the underground aquifers that supply more than 53 percent of the nation's drinking water, including 97 percent in rural areas. The following are a few other alarming facts about the safety of our drinking water:

• A 1982 EPA survey of large public water systems supplied by underground aquifers found 45 percent of them to be contaminated with organic chemicals
• In New Jersey, every major aquifer is contaminated by chemical pollutants
• In California, pesticides contaminate the drinking water of more than one million people
•  On Long Island, more than four thousand wells are contaminated with Temik, a potent pesticide used in the region for potato farming
• Underground aquifers surrounding almost all of the nation's nuclear?weapon facilities have been contaminated with radioactive waste and other toxic chemicals. Some of the most severely affected areas include those surrounding Fernald, Ohio; the Mound Facility near Miamisburg, Ohio; Livermore, California; and Hanford Reservation near Richland, Washington. In Texas, the primary source of drinking water for Amarillo, the Ogallala Aquifer, has been poisoned by the Pantex Facility, while the Savannah River Plant near Aiken, South Carolina, has contaminated that area's most important aquifer.

Of the more than forty-eight thousand chemicals listed by the EPA, little or nothing is known about thirty-five thousand of them. Less than one thousand of them have been tested at all for their health effects on humans, while only about half that number have been analyzed for their ability to produce cancer. Despite the real or suspected danger of many of these chemicals, the EPA regulates levels for only thirty of them in your drinking water; and often that regulation stems from years of citizen action rather than EPA diligence to protect public health. The agency has also proposed to stop setting zero contamination goals for chemicals suspected of causing cancer. Standards for compounds in which a link to cancer is not "clearly established" would become even less stringent. Congress had directed the EPA to increase the number of regulated chemicals to eighty-three by  June 1989, to publish a list of suspected contaminants, to adopt regulations concerning twenty-five of those substances by 1991, and to regularly adopt standards for three more chemicals each year thereafter. As usual, however, the EPA was slow to act. in the meantime, according to a report released by the National Wildlife Federation in October 1988, "millions of Americans are drinking unsafe water." The federation blamed the federal government for failing to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act. Upon review of federal documents the wildlife federation, the nation's largest environmental group, found that in 1987, public water systems serving thirty-seven million people violated the law 101,588 times, but that states took action on these violations only 2,544 times and the EPA acted on only 50 cases. 

The federation's report echoed an earlier study conducted by a group affiliated with consumer advocate Ralph Nader that condemned EPA inaction and criticized the agency for being derelict in its duty. The group, Center for Responsive Law, found that nearly one out of five public water systems across the country were contaminated by chemicals. 

The following are some of the contaminants, how they commonly find their way into our water supplies, and how can they affect our health:

Benzene: A clear, colorless liquid derived from petroleum. It is used in the manufacture of pesticides, detergents, pharmaceuticals, paints, plastics, and motor fuels, and is widely used by industries as a solvent. Benzene is a potent carcinogen. It enters our water supply primarily as industrial waste and agricultural runoff, and through leaky fuel tanks. Some 40 percent of the nation's groundwater may be contaminated by gasoline, the complex chemical structure of which contains not only benzene, but also many other dangerous substances like ethylene dibromide (EDB). One gallon of gasoline can contaminate seventy-five thousand gallons of water with these toxic chemicals. The EPA estimates that nearly a quarter of the 2.5 million gasoline storage tanks across the nation may be leaking. Most of these tanks have already outlived their normal life expectancy, but the oil companies have been slow to replace them. In some contamination situations, the companies have compensated people whose water supply was contaminated by the leaks, but they are settling these matters out of court and hence have not made any admission of guilt. Around Denver, for instance, Chevron bought up forty-one homes and relocated residents at a cost of $10 million when groundwater was found to be contaminated by gasoline leaks. Mobil and Exxon spent $1 million to build a new water system in Canobe Park, Rhode island, when existing water supplies became tainted by gasoline.

Trichloroethylene: Also known as TCE, this chemical has accumulated in the environment from the disposal of dry cleaning materials, the manufacture of pesticides, paints, waxes, varnishes, paint stripper, and metal degreasers. Minute amounts of this chemical are suspected of causing cancer. For residents of Des Moines, Iowa, levels of this deadly chemical in their drinking water climbed to more than eighteen times the federal standard of fifty parts per billion in 1983. The cause: A local company had used the chemical in the sixties as a solvent to remove grease from brakes and wheels. When it came to disposing of the stuff, the company sprayed it on its parking lot to control dust and dumped the rest down the drain. In Fort Edwards, New York, it was only after TCE reached levels of two thousand times the federal standard that officials from the New York State Board of Health told residents that they should discontinue using their water. By this time, levels were so high that health officials advised residents to simply shut off their taps. Showers were dangerous because TCE can vaporize and be inhaled. If residents flushed the toilet, they were supposed to shut the lid and get out of the bathroom. The source of Fort Edward's problems was a General Electric factory that leaked and soaked the ground with TCE. Rains drove the chemical further into the earth, where it contaminated the city's groundwater.

Inorganic Chemicals

Arsenic is known to cause skin and nervous system disorders. It enters our water supply through pesticide residues, industrial waste, and smelting operations. The lndustriplex 128 industrial park in Woburn, Massachusetts, has been found to contain huge arsenic pits dating back from 1863, when the Merrimac Chemical Company moved to the site and began manufacturing arsenical insecticides. The complex is now designated as one of the forty Superfund cleanup sites across the nation. 

Barium can affect the circulatory system. It enters our water as a result of pesticide residues, industrial waste, and smelting operations. A 1983 EPA report found that fifteen hundred to three thousand municipal water systems across the country rely on groundwater that contains excess levels of arsenic, barium, and lead. 

Cadmium and chromium mainly come to us from geological mining and smelting. Both affect the kidneys, and chromium is toxic to the liver. The lndustriplex has also been found to contain huge chromium lagoons developed by glue manufacturers who used chromium treated tannery scraps. The chromium, as well as the arsenic and other chemical deposits, are now leaching and contaminating the area's groundwater supplies. 

Lead is one of the most prevalent and most toxic forms of water pollution. It is extremely toxic to children and pregnant women, and can result in delayed physical and mental development in babies and mental impairment in children. Excessive lead can also lead to nervous system damage, hearing loss, anemia, and kidney damage. Even in small amounts the metal can inhibit red blood cell formation and cause low weight births. Lead usually enters our water by leaching out of lead pipes and lead solder pipe joints. 

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 10.4 million children are exposed to excessive amounts of lead in their drinking water. According to EPA senior scientist Joel Schwartz, "The more we learn about lead, the more we find adverse effects at lower and lower levels. Drinking water is now a major source of lead for a sizable portion of the population."

To express its concern about high lead concentrations in America's drinking water, the EPA has issued proposals to decrease levels of the metal, but most environmentalists view the proposals as weak and ineffectual. First, they address the lead problem by recommending that water be chemically treated to decrease its ability to leach the metal from pipe. With the current level of chemicals in our water supply, this chemical solution is a poor response to the contamination of our water. Moreover, the EPA proposals do not set numerical limits for the amount of lead that can be found in water coming from public systems, but instead only tell water authorities to use their "best efforts" to decrease quantities to the lowest possible level as determined by state and federal authorities. In the event that the water does not meet these standards, the water suppliers do not have to take any further action except to conduct public education programs to show people how to decrease their exposure. 

Public education programs are important, particularly in poorer areas where people may have old and corroded pipes contaminating their water, yet they cannot afford bottled water. But they are certainly not a substitute for decisive regulation and control. Nevertheless, until the EPA and other governmental agencies decide to act more responsibly, you need to be informed about the measures you can take to reduce exposure to lead. The ideal solution is to replace all pipes made of lead or containing lead soldering. For most people this is not practicable because replacement is too expensive. One thing that everyone can do, however, is to let water run for a few minutes before using it for cooking or drinking. This allows for the clearing of water that has been sitting in pipes and accumulating lead contamination.

Particularly alarming because of lead's toxicity to children was a finding from a congressional investigation panel that many, if not most, of the electric water fountains used in schools and buildings were releasing unhealthy levels of lead. Paul Mushak, a professor of environmental pathology and coauthor of a study on lead poisoning in children, testified before a congressional subcommittee that the lead was entering the drinking fountain water through lead lined storage tanks and lead soldering used in their construction. He warned that the fountains, often found in schools and daycare centers, posed very serious risks to children because of their high susceptibility to lead poisoning.

Fluoride: (more online information regarding Fluoride)  For nearly forty years, respected organizations like the American Dental Association and the U.S. Public Health Service have promoted the claim that fluoridation prevents dental cavities. Responding to these claims, cities around the country have added this chemical to their drinking water supplies, usually at levels of about one part per million. 

There are no published studies showing that fluoride reduces tooth decay. What we do know is that excessive fluoride causes skeletal damage, and a disease called fluorosis in which teeth develop white spots and become brittle. There is also mounting evidence that fluoride causes cancer. According to Dean Burk, a senior researcher at the National Cancer Institute, in the United States alone more people have died in the last thirty years from cancer connected with fluoridation than all the military deaths in the entire history of the United States. 

While fluoride does appear naturally in water, sometimes even in quite elevated levels in some areas of the country, the primary source of the chemical is through active fluoridation campaigns. Surveys comparing cancer deaths in large U.S. cities where fluoridation started before 1960 with those in fluoridation free cities suggest that the forced medication of the inhabitants results in forty thousand excess cancer deaths per year. Cities currently fluoridating their water include Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, St. Louis, and San Francisco. 

Polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs: These chemicals belong to a family of substances called halogenated aromatic hydrocarbon. This family also contains such chemicals as DDT and TCDD (or dioxin), which are among some of the most toxic chemicals known to man. Like the chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) that are so damaging to the ozone layer of our atmosphere, the properties of these chlorine derivatives making them so attractive to industry are the same properties causing environmental havoc. They are extremely stable, so they remain in the environment for a long time, are heat resistant, durable, nonflammable, and non-conducting. PCBs have been widely used in transformers and other electrical equipment, pesticides, heat exchanger fluids, paints, plastics, adhesives, and sealers. High levels of these chemicals have entered waterways throughout the country either by industrial dumping or sewage systems. Some of the most contaminated areas include the Great Lakes; Escambia Bay, Florida; Waukegan Harbor, Illinois; the Chesapeake Bay; San Francisco Bay; Puget Sound; and the Hudson River. 

Because these chemicals are heat resistant and do not break down easily, they present many disposal problems. Today, the EPA has approved burning them in giant incinerators, but even at temperatures of one thousand degrees Celsius scientists have discovered that the temperatures merely drove the PCBs out of the contaminated sludge and into the gas vapor exiting the incinerators. Incomplete burning of PCBs is also one way in which dioxin is created. 

Burying the chemicals in landfills or dumping them in waterways, which served as the primary method of disposal for many years, has lead to widespread contamination. The EPA estimates that 90 percent of the world's population have measurable levels of PCBs in their bodies. Like DDT, these chemicals accumulate in the oils and fats of animals and increase in concentration as they move up the food chain. Hence, if the cycle started with tiny levels of PC13 contamination in plankton, by the time you eat a fish that has eaten another fish that has eaten the plankton, you will be receiving a much more concentrated dosage of the toxic chemical. According to Joseph Highland of the Environmental Defense Fund, the levels of contamination and the number of people affected continue to increase every year. Human breast milk is currently so heavily contaminated that the average nursing infant exceeds by ten times the maximum daily intake level of PCBs established by the Food and Drug Administration. Fish, birds, and livestock in many parts of the United States are literally sodden with PCBs. 

DEVELOPMENT, MISUSE, AND THE POLITICS OF WATER

Up until recently, water has been largely plentiful. There has been no real need to worry about its future or its conservation. Today while contamination is threatening much of the nation's drinking water, the remaining potable water is being overtaxed by the complex interaction of a number of sociological factors. 

Figuring prominently among these factors is the uncontrolled and ill planned development now taking place throughout the country. In Houston, Texas, major sections of the city and surrounding areas have sunk nearly four feet, and geologists predict that within the next twenty years these city areas may fall an additional eight to ten feet. Whole areas surrounding Galveston Bay are now suburbs underwater, permanently lost. The cause of these sinkings are not earthquakes, floodings, or other natural phenomena, but rather the result of the over-demand on limited water tables due to rapid population growth and ill planned development. Prior to the Houston experience, these sorts of cave-ins used to be unique to desert areas such as Phoenix, where it was easy to consume more water than could naturally be returned to the ground. This is due to what is called "mining" or "overdrafting" the water. 

Fred Powledge, a journalist specializing in water problems, believes wholesale development of the countryside, or urban sprawl, has drastic effects on the water system ecology, which, it should be emphasized, is the most fragile component of the ecological system. The sinking of whole buildings and areas into these giant potholes is due to the depletion of the water table, largely because of the excess demand placed on a limited water supply. When we pave large surfaces to build shopping centers, schools, and hospitals and encourage people to move there, we eliminate land that would otherwise effectively act as a sponge, soaking up rainwater and depositing it into the aquifers. The new population compounds this damage by increasing the consumption of an already decreased water supply. When these areas are near rivers, the problem is even worse. The paved areas act as a ditch leading directly into the river and cause flooding.

As supplies become scarce, water is becoming an increasingly political commodity. The growing competition for water is exemplified in Denver, where many competing interests are battling for control of the underground aquifer system. Wars are being waged by all sectors of society; livestock farmers, agricultural farmers, industry, builders (who without water cannot supply the needs of real estate developers), and municipalities fighting to maintain adequate supplies to serve the existing populations and structures. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, water had become such a coveted commodity that lawyers had already begun to specialize in and litigate over water rights around the Denver area. According to Powledge, even then competition for water was an issue. Subsidized agriculture and the associated irrigation contribute much to the water shortage and competition.

Ironically, much of this competition also springs from abundance. In 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed, paving the way for the massive governmental works projects of the 1930s that dammed the Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers, as well as many others throughout the country. it was at the time a grand project conceived during the Dust Bowl drought. By the mid 1930s, the Hoover, Shasta, Grand Coulee, Bonneville, and Fort Peck dams were simultaneously under construction. At that time, they were the five largest structures on the face of the earth. Over the following forty years, nearly one thousand other dams would be built. 

These public work projects did put America back to work and provided large quantities of water for agriculture in areas that could never have supported crops without it. But these massive undertakings also grossly intervened in ecostructures of entire states and started us on a road of waste and mismanagement that is now here to plague us. Mark Reisner, a former staff writer for the National Resources Defense Council and the author of Cadillac Desert, a history of water and the American West, points out some of the almost absurd situations into which our water policies have led us. In California, the single biggest consumer of water is irrigated pasture: grass grown in a near desert climate for cows. In 1986, irrigated pasture used about 5.3 million acre/feet of water, as much as all twenty-seven million people in the state consumed, including use for swimming pools and lawns. Its financial contribution, on the other hand, was only one five thousandth of California's $500 billion economy, while it drank up one seventh of the water. 

Reisner points out that California is unusual only in that it uses proportionately less water then most other states serviced by the dam networks. In Colorado, alfalfa to feed cows consumes nearly 30 percent of the state's water, much more than the share taken by Denver, yet adds less than $200 million to the economy. Tourism uses almost no water but contributes about twelve times as much to the economy as alfalfa. 

The politics surrounding water rights and usage are indeed complex. Once farmers become used to and dependent upon a cheap and virtually limitless supply of water for irrigation, there is little incentive to change. When there was enough to go around without conservation and the nation needed the jobs generated by the construction from these systems, the benefits appeared to outweigh the costs. But things have changed since the 1930s. Water is now in demand, and people are starting to look at what it costs us to maintain programs like irrigated pasture and rice growing in the desert. 

There are a number of viable and affordable measures that could be taken immediately. Simply lining the earthen canals of the imperial Valley with cement, for instance, could save nearly half the amount of water being diverted to Arizona. Southern California's Water Authority has proposed to assume the cost for this lining in exchange to the rights to all water saved. 

SOLUTIONS AND RESOURCES

The dichotomy existing with the Indian treatment of the Ganges is seen throughout the world. Rather than being beyond such practices, if anything, the industrialized world is even guiltier than the Third World in terms of wholesale dumping of waste into its waterways. We have the knowledge and the tools at our disposal to manage our waste in ways that will not pollute and defile our waters, but for the most part, we are either too lazy, too shortsighted, or too cheap to employ them. Surprisingly, cleanup measures do not have to be complicated or even expensive. More than fifty years ago, West Ger mans living in the Emscher Valley of the Ruhr River organized the Genossenschaften, an association dedicated to controlling pollution in the area. The move came in response to an epidemic of illnesses following the failure of municipal sewage treatment plants. Today, the Genossenschaften has organized and oversees a complex project of pollution control. The guiding principle of the project is one of personal responsibility. Those who produce the pollution accept that they must be responsible for cleaning up their own waste. Effluents are monitored and tested in order to determine the charges payable by each industry or municipality in the area. The Genossenschaften receives a steady income from the effluent charges and from the sale of drinking water. The income is used for the management of treatment plants, dams, storage lakes, aeration equipment, and land drains.

The effluent charges have advantages. Most important, they provide the funds required to do the cleanup in the first place. Many regions in the United States would like to clean up their waterways and beaches, but exorbitant costs are always cited as a reason for putting off the cleanup activities. When each user has to pay as it pollutes, the funds are available immediately and directly, as opposed to the monies coming out of tax dollars that are always subject to a large number of competing demands. Moreover, effluent charges are more equitable than making the general taxpayer support the cost of cleanup activities. The polluting industry or the city will surely pass the costs on to the consumer either in end costs or things like sewage related taxes. But there will also be more incentive to shift away from polluting activities. If, for instance, a company producing white paper and emitting dioxin as a by product is forced to pay for those emissions, the cost of its paper will go up. But, if the paper is more expensive, people may shift either to paper that is not quite as white or one that has been bleached through a less environmentally damaging process. The West German experience showed that by having industries pay according to their amounts of effluents, many companies were motivated to develop technology to cut down their emissions of toxic substances. Many companies began to recycle wastes and found that they could make a profit in the meantime. For example, usable sulfuric acid is being recovered in some of West Germany's steel factories. Canning plants have found that they can recover salable vinegar from what was once waste. Paper industries have cut down their effluents 90 percent simply by switching from one process to another. In Japan and the Soviet Union, environmentally conscious managers have even found that thermal pollution can be put to good uses. They have developed systems where the hot water is pumped for cooling, for recreational purposes, and for fattening up eels and carp, both of which respond well to the warmth.

Case 1: Acton, Massachusetts

In 1954, the W. R. Grace company opened a chemical plant in Acton, about thirty miles northwest of Boston. By 1973, complaints about chemical fumes and groundwater contamination were becoming fairly frequent. The company was found to be emitting formaldehyde vapors and, in 1981, a large release of styrene gas necessitated evacuation of local residents. While the EPA contended that air pollution was the company's major problem, it soon became apparent that its pollution of groundwater was at least as serious, if not more so.

In 1978, Grace applied for a license to open a new battery separator plant at a location that was not far from wells supplying 40 percent of the town's water. Townspeople were opposed to the new construction. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Quality Engineering (DEQE) took samples from the well that were about half a mile away from Grace's existing plants. The samples revealed levels of nine toxic chemicals, including benzene, toluene, chloroform, and methylene chloride. Results of the study were known to town officials, but they issued the permit to Grace anyway. Residents were not made aware of the study until two weeks later, when the wells were shut down.

Shortly thereafter, the Acton Citizens for Environmental Safety (ACES) was formed to protest Grace's waste disposal practices, which it believed to be responsible for the wells' pollution. The group was criticized from the outset and was told that it was overreacting. Although the wells had been closed for safety reasons, town officials said that the water was not that polluted and are on record as even suggesting that the chemical "may even be good for you."

With little public or governmental support, ACES found it was fighting an uphill battle. Grace's practice of dumping its load of toxic waste water into unlined pits continued unabated. By the end of 1979, a report on the contamination of the well confirmed the citizens' concerns about Grace's practices. The water was poisoned from chemicals emanating from the Grace facilities. Public support began to grow for ACES, but government officials maintained that there was nothing they could do to stop the company from conducting its business as usual. Of course, this was untrue. Even at that time, there were laws that would have enabled environmental officials to order Grace to stop polluting, had the officials chosen to enforce them.

The events surrounding Grace and its pollution continued to be a major boondoggle. Two years After the well water contamination was discovered and a year after Grace was cited as the culprit, the EPA and DEQE did manage to convince Grace to stop its disposal practices. But little was done to force Grace to assume responsibility for the mess it had already made. Instead of taking charge of the situation, the government allowed Grace to hire a consulting firm to assess the degree of pollution existing at its sites. Not surprisingly, the results of the assessment were as favorable as they could be to Grace. Nevertheless, some pollution was so pronounced that even a self-reviewing study could not hope to totally camouflage it. Even then, government dragged its feet. While dangerous metals like arsenic, beryllium, and chromium were found in high concentrations in the unlined lagoons, well waters remained untested for these substances. Today, the Grace disposal sites in Acton are designated as a Superfund site. This means that, at last, they will eventually be cleaned up and detoxified, but it will be at the taxpayers', not the company's, expense.

Case 2: Waukegan Harbor, Michigan

There is some progress being made in cleaning up our waters, and although citizen action groups and grass roots organizations are responsible for the lion's share of the credit, government agencies do make some progress when they are diligent in their enforcement of the law. in October 1988, after many years of bitter battle, federal and state officials succeeded in getting an outboard motor manufacturer on Lake Michigan to agree to pay $20 million toward the clean up of PCBs it had been dumping into the Waukegan Harbor since 1961. Shortly following the signing of the consent decree between Outboard Marine Corporation and environmental officials, Illinois State attorney general Neil Hartigan hailed the agreement as a "major environmental victory," especially, as he pointed out, because the cleanup was being accomplished without the use of taxpayer dollars.

This case also points out the importance of government involvement. Citizens could perhaps have achieved the same results, but it would have been an even longer and more harrowing battle without the clout of the federal government. One of the reasons that the case dragged on for such a long time was the company's obstructive tactics. According to EPA spokesperson John Perrecone, the company first claimed that PCBs presented no health hazards, then later, when federal officials were seeking to determine the extent of the pollution, the company denied the officials access to the plant. In 1986, however, armed with an amended federal waste cleanup law allowing them access to the premises, the federal environmental officials did manage to get on-site. When the company could no longer hide behind trade secrets and the privacy of its property, it realized that it had no real alternative but to negotiate.

Case 3: Barnstable, Massachusetts

The town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod provides another good example of how much can be accomplished when all levels of government cooperate in issues affecting our waters. Barnstable, once a sleepy little beach community, has over the last twenty to thirty years experienced one of the fastest growth rates in the country. Between 1960 and 1980, the town saw a 129 percent increase in its permanent residents, and a 185 percent growth in summertime inhabitants. As with all areas of the country undergoing this rapid growth, one of the major problems facing the community has been to ensure an adequate supply of safe drinking water. While Cape Cod has a natural abundance of high quality water, its sandy soil makes the underground aquifers particularly susceptible to pollution by contaminants. By 1988, town officials realized that they were facing a serious water supply crisis. Six toxic dumps had already been identified as sources of pollution in nine of the town's public water wells. instead of procrastinating until the severity of the problem made it virtually unsolvable, the town took immediate action. It bought up over 774 acres of endangered land for some $32 million, ordinances were passed to place tighter controls on polluting activities, and a public awareness campaign was initiated. The town also took its case before state and federal officials. With support and cooperation from all levels of government, Barnstable initiated a comprehensive program of groundwater protection that may serve as a model for many other areas of the country in years to come.

The Cape Cod Aquifer Management Project (CCAMP), an association of water officials from communities all along Cape Cod, supervised the project and developed a workable and realistic approach to the problem. It first looked at the nature of the resource its vulnerability to contamination, the demands placed upon it by population growth as well as mapping out specific areas that supplied well water for the town. It then looked at land use in the area. Scientists were called in to examine existing sites believed to be contributing to pollution. One specific site was chosen for an in depth analysis. Although it was around a major wellhead providing much of the town's drinking water, the CCAMP found 186 underground storage tanks, 6 confirmed hazardous waste sites, and a waste water treatment plant that had significant runoff into the ground. Armed with information like this, all levels of government began to work together to find solutions. City planners participated in drawing up zoning regulations that would minimize further pollution, law enforcement officials were given the go ahead for a clampdown on polluters, and standards were set for the disposal and storage of toxic substances.

Cleaning up our waterways and oceans is going to necessarily entail the development of adequate waste disposal systems. The first and most important step here is to control pollution at its source. As we have seen, West Germany has found a "polluter" tax one viable way to achieve this end. With polluters each assuming responsibility for their own waste, in time they inevitably find ways to decrease emission. Going hand in hand with this approach is strict government enforcement of pollution laws. We have the laws to require polluters to stop pollution and to pay for what they have already done. It is up to each of us to let our politicians know that we expect these laws to be enforced and that we do not find it acceptable to continue picking up the bill for corporate America's irresponsibility.  Just following the Alaskan oil spill, Exxon announced that it was assuming full responsibility for the disaster. A few weeks later, stories began to surface that Exxon would avail itself of a tax write off for cleanup costs. This is currently legal under existing laws, and Exxon is not the first, nor will it be the last, to use such laws. While Exxon could have gone a long way in improving its public image by choosing not to use these business write offs, it still was not violating any law in doing so. If you feet that this sort of double taxation on the public, first the loss of the natural resource, then having to pay for it, is not an acceptable way to have business conducted in this country, it is time to speak up. You can do this either through direct communication of your feelings to your political representatives or by joining any of the numerous environmental groups who feel the same way you do.

For people concerned with the quality of their drinking water, there are a number of high quality water filters and purifiers now out on the market. We suggest, however, that before buying one, you look at the literature and do some research to make sure that you are cleaning rather than contaminating your water as you filter it. In September 1988, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a ruling finding that Norelco had shown "utter disregard for the welfare of its consumers and blatant disregard for the law" in knowingly marketing a water filter containing a recognized carcinogen. The Norelco fiasco illustrates not only gross corporate irresponsibility, but also the failure of governmental agencies to prevent such activities. Between 1982 and 1986, the company sold 186,000 filters for its Clean Water Machine with the knowledge that the filters could contaminate water with the carcinogen methylene chloride. Four government offices have overlapping jurisdiction over methylene chloride and none of them did anything about its presence in the Clean Water Machine. Finally, three years after Norelco stopped manufacturing and advertising the water purifier, the FTC filed a suit last year challenging the company's advertising claims.

This is not meant to discourage you from buying water purifiers, only to suggest that you might want to do some investigation before spending your money on a particular unit. There are many on the market, and most are reputable. The MultiPure system sold in many health food stores is a particularly fine product for chlorine and bacterial removal.
The same caution should be exercised when buying bottled water. New York State has recently upgraded its laws for testing bottled water. Many states require water bottlers to be certified in order to make claims as to the water's purity. Often these certifications will take the form of a number or a code on the label of the bottle. Most reputable companies do regular quality checks on their water. Deer Park Spring, a company distributing along the East Coast, says that it tests its water every four hours for contaminants. Evian, the world's largest bottled water distributor, says that it does two hundred checks a day on its water.

If you are concerned about the water in your area, there are a number of environmental organizations throughout the country that may be able to advise you on your particular problem.

• Friends of the Earth, (202) 544?2600, is located in Washington, D.C. At the time of this writing, the person to contact concerning EPA landfill regulations and groundwater pollution is Valma Smith. She is currently involved in trying to enact a national law to protect groundwater.
• Public Citizen's Group, a Ralph Nader organization, (202) 5464996, also works via its lobbyist, Anne Bloom, toward passage of a uniform groundwater protection act. She specializes in groundwater pollution from things like pesticides, landfill, and solid waste leaching.