SECURITY — Invisible toxic chemicals are contaminating drinking water for 80,000 people south of Colorado Springs, one of 63 areas nationwide where the chemicals, widely used to fight petroleum fires, have been measured at levels the EPA deems dangerous.
These perfluorinated chemicals rank among the worst in an expanding multitude of unregulated contaminants that federal scientists are detecting in city water supplies, including hormones, pesticides, antibiotics and anti-depressants. Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) don’t break down. Boiling water won’t get rid of them.
Military airfields are suspected by Colorado health investigators as a point where the chemicals seeped into the Fountain Creek watershed north of Widefield, Fountain and Security. Air Force officials told The Denver Post it’s too early to tell.
It has reached the point where the water in all 32 of the Security Water and Sanitation District’s municipal wells is contaminated with PFCs at levels exceeding an EPA health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion. At one well, PFCs have hit 1,370 ppt, federal data show — nearly 20 times higher than the limit. EPA officials recommended that pregnant women and small children should not drink local water.
Security Water and Sanitation District manager Roy Heald has shut off seven wells, including those feeding into a signature white water tower above the city. And he mailed notices June 3 informing customers that their water is contaminated with chemicals linked to cancer and other ailments. Fountain officials also shut wells.
Some residents, seeing those notices in their water bills about contamination exceeding the May 19 EPA health advisory limit, have switched to bottled water. A few asked local utility officials to pay, only to hear that neither the utility nor the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment nor the EPA nor the Air Force will step in. Widefield School District 3 officials are installing water dispensers.
At a meeting Wednesday, Heald pleaded with CDPHE and EPA officials for help. “We have no more money here.”
Other residents, such as Schnitzel King restaurant owner Sigi Herbst, already were relying on bottled water because of previous well contamination with other chemicals, including a cancer-causing solvent used in metal degreasing and dry cleaning.
“It is one of those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ things. You can’t let the country burn up. But you have to protect your water supplies,” retiree Chuck Mayville, 69, said after paying his bill, worrying about the potential impact on his grandchildren.
“The chemical (industry) people are going to have to look into this. I don’t want to say they are at fault, but they are,” Mayville said. “This touches the lives of everyone down here.”
Lowe’s appliance clerk Shirley French, 60, read the notice last week while idling in her blue sedan with children in car seats.
“Oh. Wow.”
She’ll drink only bottled water, refilling jugs for 25 cents a gallon at a 7-Eleven, slightly cheaper than at Walmart and Family Dollar, she said. More people have been coming to Lowe’s to purchase water filters, French has observed, as did clerk Cody Mesa, 21, in Walmart.
Prolonged exposure to perfluorinated chemicals is linked to health harm: developmental damage to fetuses during pregnancy, low birth weight, accelerated puberty and distorted bones. The EPA advisory also linked the chemicals to kidney and testicular cancer, liver tissue damage, impaired production of antibodies and cholesterol changes.
Perfluorinated chemicals aren’t regulated under any national water standard, although Vermont and New Hampshire have launched state-level action. Colorado has not.
“We didn’t see this coming,” Heald said, looking over a map dividing Security (population 19,000) into zones where water is thought to be more and less contaminated.
While seven wells are shut, Security relies on water from 23 other contaminated wells, drilled 80 feet deep along Fountain Creek, for up to nearly two-thirds of the water supplied to a growing population.
“We have no other choice but to use our wells to meet demand,” Heald said, acknowledging “there is water in our system with chemicals exceeding the health advisory levels.”
Utility crews are trying to blend well water as much as possible with cleaner water piped 45 miles from Pueblo Reservoir.
“This is devastating for us. … If you want bottled water, you can go buy it any day. There’s no indication, for the man on the street, that health is a concern. Now, for pregnant women and infants, yeah, it may be a concern,” Heald said.
“We didn’t cause the contamination, but we are feeling the effects. … We are reducing that exposure to the greatest degree we can.”
Pueblo Reservoir contains relatively clean water because acid heavy metal contamination of mountain headwaters from dormant mines is diluted. Yet this diverted Arkansas River water costs three times more than local well water, delivered using an $825 million pipeline and treatment plant completed April 30 by Colorado Springs. Security recently began buying up to 2.8 million gallons a day from Colorado Springs. Bracing for the bills, Security officials last week began campaigning for residents to minimize watering of gardens and lawns.
“We’re water professionals. That doesn’t mean we have all the answers,” Heald said. “This is going to be really tough. … But it is our obligation to provide water to the public. We will do the best we can. … The optimal solution is to figure out how to clean up local water sources.”
Neighboring Widefield (population 33,000) and Fountain (population 28,000) also are scrambling for safe water, shifting off wells to alternative water piped north from Pueblo.
Fountain normally draws from eight municipal wells, all now contaminated with PFCs above the limit, utilities director Curtis Mitchell said. He planned to notify residents in July — “the responsible thing to do.” Fountain has hired an engineering firm to find a solution.
“There are other contaminants, as well, that we need to be concerned about. But this is the one receiving attention from the EPA now,” Mitchell said, comparing the PFCs to asbestos.
“It was a great miracle substance that was used for years. But then we found out it is very dangerous. That’s the world we live in. We continue to learn more and more,” he said.
“Perfluorinated compounds are persistent. This isn’t going away for decades. We need to explore our options.”
Colorado cities in the Fountain watershed ranked among the hardest-hit of 63 areas nationwide where the EPA has found PFCs exceeding the 70 ppt limit, according to data requested by The Denver Post. That limit is far less protective than what environmental advocates have urged. A new study found women in California absorbed contamination at the 70 ppt level into their blood.
The EPA has measured PFCs exceeding the limit in 1 percent of 4,864 public water systems tested nationwide. That means more than 5 million Americans in 33 states regularly may be drinking water contaminated with perfluorinated chemicals.
“Lower-income and minority populations may be impacted in some of these communities,” agency spokeswoman Monica Lee acknowledged in response to Post queries, “and it is a priority for EPA to ensure that states and local communities are focused on the potential for disparate impacts as they develop communications and other potential response activities to address these issues.”
Colorado health officials pointed out that “because PFCs are unregulated, firefighting foams and other products containing these chemicals are legal.” The CDPHE “does not have authority to ban them,” agency spokesman Mark Salley said in response to emailed queries.
CDPHE officials are working with the Air Force to find out where PFCs are entering water.
El Paso County, with CDPHE help, recently tested 16 private wells south of Peterson Air Force Base. The results provided to The Post showed PFC contamination in 13 of those wells at levels ranging from 100 to 260 ppt.
Air Force officials say they’re conducting a preliminary assessment of airfield activities and that they’ll do a full assessment next year as part of nationwide assessments. Peterson Air Force Base spokesman Steve Brady said local government testing has not confirmed the source.
“It’s too early to say exactly where it is coming from,” Brady said, adding that the Air Force has switched the foam it uses to put out aviation fuel fires to a type that does not contain PFCs.
Military officials are not considering providing bottled water for residents, he said.
Perfluorinated chemicals also come from carpet, clothing, food packaging such as microwave popcorn bags. The chemicals are used in industrial processes, such as manufacturing of Teflon non-stick coatings, for which Dupont has been the target of lawsuits.
These chemicals “are going to stick around unless we intervene and do something,” said Colorado School of Mines civil and environmental engineering professor Chris Higgins, who has conducted studies on PFCs for the Denver-based Water Research Foundation.
“They will not go away on their own,” Higgins said. “I would want to make sure there are no pregnant women or young children drinking this water.”
Perfluorinated chemicals are one group within an increasing load of unregulated chemicals that federal scientists say they are detecting in municipal drinking water supplies.
These include antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, herbicides and other industrial byproducts of modern life. Because they are all unregulated, there’s little control. Federal researchers are detecting them widely, even in Rocky Mountain National Park, mostly at very minute levels.
“The list is very long and has the potential to be much longer,” U.S. Geological Survey research hydrologist William Battaglin said. For example, sampling done north of Denver after the 2013 South Platte River floods found 49 of 110 pharmaceutical and other chemicals including stimulants, painkillers, diabetes medications and antibiotics.
“New chemicals, drugs, pesticides and personal care products are introduced into the market each year,” Battaglin said. As a result, “more odd stuff is showing up in water.”
While trace levels seldom present health threats, Battaglin said even low levels of hormones in water can have impacts by mimicking naturally released hormones that trigger physical responses.
Altered fish sex organs have been documented in the Denver area. But there’s been relatively little research on how long-term exposure may affect people.
Perfluorinated chemicals have not received the sort of congressional attention that last year led to a ban on plastic “microbeads” used in personal care products.
Water treatment engineers addressed the issue in a recent conference, concluding that treatment plants could be built or upgraded to remove perfluorintated chemicals using advanced membrane or carbon filtering systems. Such treatment could not break down the super-strong carbon-flouride chemical bonds but would remove the chemicals from water, forming a brine waste that would have to be disposed of at hazardous-waste landfills.
School administrators are bracing. Summer school students at four elementary schools in Security last week began using bottled water. About 3,000 of Widefield School District 3’s 9,000 students attend schools in the areas where drinking water is contaminated, chief operations officer Dennis Neal said after briefing the superintendent.
“I would hope somebody would step up and say here is some financial help. What happens when school starts? We have got to have a plan in place,” Neal said.
“We’re trying to figure out our options. Parents want to know their kids are safe. For us, dealing with kids all the time, we take this seriously. We look at it as a potential health hazard for kids. We will try to protect the kids as best as we can.”
