Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/tag/epa/)
Gaps in federal drinking water standards enforced by the state leave numerous school and day care sites untested for lead in drinking water; numerous lead service lines remain.
Nine months after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned against flushing water systems before testing for lead, the state Department of Natural Resources has not yet passed that advice on to public water systems in Wisconsin.
Eastern Wisconsin has among the highest levels of the heavy metal strontium in drinking water. Limits may be on the way for this unregulated contaminant.
The Madison Water Utility was the first major utility in the nation to demonstrate that a full replacement of both the public and the private portions of lead service lines was possible.
Experts, and even some regulators, say existing laws are failing to protect Wisconsin and the nation from harmful exposure to lead in drinking water that leaches from aging plumbing — a danger illustrated by the public health crisis in Flint, Michigan.
An ancient poison that was detected in the late 1980s in Wisconsin’s drinking water persists despite state regulations designed to eliminate it. High-capacity wells can exacerbate the problem.
A refinery’s proposal to ship heavy crude oil from Superior across the Great Lakes has emergency responders gearing up to bolster gaps in current oil spill response plans. And the gaps are substantial, experts say.
Emails from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Competing studies are under way to assess air pollution from Wisconsin’s frac sand industry, and the author of one said current state law isn’t protecting people well enough. A separate study, meanwhile, will examine the impact of frac sand mines on water.
Sites that have been funded through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s brownfields program, as of August 2012.
The stated goals of the federal government’s Brownfields Program are to fund the cleanup of contamination, to improve the quality of life of blighted communities and to provide economic stimulus. But an investigation by nonprofit newsrooms across the country, coordinated by the Investigative News Network, found problems in every community examined.
While the state has made some progress with the backlog in the past two decades, a “startling” number of plant closings during the recent recession has created “an entirely new generation of brownfields,” according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.