Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/tag/water-quality/)
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.
As communities grow and pump more groundwater, radium from deep bedrock is contaminating dozens of water systems. The city of Waukesha wants to tap into Lake Michigan to solve its radium problem.
Two Democratic lawmakers want the state Department of Health Services to investigate drinking water as a possible source when children are lead poisoned. The proposal also greatly lowers the blood lead levels that would trigger an investigation.
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.
Decades of toxic waste disposal at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant — including pouring millions of gallons a day of polluted water into Lake Wisconsin — have contaminated some nearby residents’ drinking water and raised concerns about the long-term effects on their health. But help may be on the way.
Agriculture creates most of the nitrate pollution, but consumers pay most of the cost, whether they drink from public wells or private ones.
Nitrate is a compound naturally found in plants and in vegetables and can be found in groundwater, depending on how much fertilizer and manure is applied to fields.
In the early 1990s, Jim Goodman and his wife began to worry about how the chemicals they were using on the farm might affect their children. The fourth-generation Wisconsin farmer decided to make the shift away from conventional farming at his Sauk County operation. Now certified organic, the farm includes 120 head of cattle on pasture, including 45 milk cows, and 300 acres of crops.
Levels of nitrate, one of the Wisconsin’s top drinking water contaminants, are increasing. Nitrate comes primarily from fertilizers, including manure, and puts infants and expectant mothers particularly at risk. A projected 94,000 households are drinking private well water with unsafe levels of nitrate. And many of them don’t even know it since few private well owners conduct regular testing.
Hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin’s 5.8 million residents are at risk of consuming drinking water tainted with substances including lead, nitrate, disease-causing bacteria and viruses, naturally occurring heavy metals and other contaminants, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has found.