The Stream, August 28, 2024: Toxic Lead in LA Neighborhood’s Drinking Water a Symptom of Pollution and Neglect, Residents Say

A water meter cover in Los Angeles, California. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN

Continuing an unprecedented year for landslides globally, an atmospheric river across southeast Alaska has triggered another, killing one person and disrupting travel in the port town of Ketchikan.
A new report reveals the long-lasting impacts of unchecked pollution and redlining in the community of Watts, Los Angeles, where water samples have been found to contain widespread levels of toxic lead.
Relentless, extreme monsoon rains — attributed to climate change — have affected or displaced nearly 6 million people in Bangladesh.
Groundwater on Nassau County, Long Island, is being pumped faster than it is replenished, making the community’s coastal wells increasingly vulnerable to saltwater intrusion.

Following a period of heavy rains, a dam collapse in Sudan has killed dozens and destroyed thousands of homes near the Red Sea.

“The area is unrecognizable. The electricity and water pipes are destroyed.” — Omar Eissa Haroun, director of Sudan’s Red Sea state water authority.

At least 60 people in Sudan’s Red Sea state have died this week following the collapse of the Arbat dam, whose 25 million cubic meter capacity is the primary source of drinking water for the coastal city of Port Sudan, BBC reports. The tragedy comes after months of unusually heavy seasonal rains, which led to flooding and the accumulation of silt at the dam. Officials estimate that nearly 50,000 households are affected by the disaster, Reuters reports. The collapse also damaged a fiber-optic cable, severely limiting communications as rescue efforts continue.

— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Stream Editor

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

War, Drought Cause Spike in Violent Water Conflicts — New report catalogs sharp rise in clashes connected to water in 2023.
Great Lakes Beach Closings Are No Protection From Harmful Pollutants — Updated water testing technology needed to make Great Lakes safer.

The Lead

A new study out of Watts, a two-square-mile community in southern Los Angeles, has found its drinking water to contain widespread levels of lead considered toxic by federal standards, the Guardian reports.

Neighborhood leaders say that the findings are no surprise, and the result of decades-long municipal neglect for the primarily Black community’s water woes. For the study, the Better Watts Initiative collaborated with UCLA researchers to test faucets in apartment buildings, homes, and public housing developments — the latter of which most frequently registered lead levels above five parts-per-billion (ppb), the federal standard for the metal in bottled water.

A local legacy of industry — including recycling plants and steel mills — continues to affect Watts’s roughly 34,000 residents. In Nickerson Gardens, Los Angeles’s largest public housing development, levels in two samples exceeded 15 ppb. Residents in other developments have complained of corroded pipes; soil at the site of the Jordan Downs housing development, when it was redeveloped in 2011, registered lead at 22,000 ppb. And the local high school, which sits adjacent to a metal plant which “regularly sends shards of metals zooming over its fence on to the high school campus,” has been found to have lead-containing dust.

Residents also worry about the spread of lead through gasoline emissions. Watts lies within the intersections of several major freightways and industrial roads, a geography borne from historic redlining practices.

“A lot of residents drink nothing but bottled water,” Yirk Turner, a longtime Watts resident who no longer lives in the community, told the Guardian. “So, you know, the part-time job, the side job, all the money I make, I have to budget it so I’m able to get the water.”

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

5.7 million

People affected by flooding across 11 districts in Bangladesh, where heavy monsoon rains have overflowed rivers and wiped away homes faster than residents could react, Reuters reports. Officials are estimating the death toll has reached 23, and more than one million families remain stranded. In a 2015 World Bank Institute report, Bangladesh, one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, was estimated to have 3.5 million people at risk of annual riparian flooding.

430

The number of fatal landslides that have occurred so far this year globally, the New York Times reports, resulting in some 3,600 deaths — figures that in historical context are “exceptional.” One of the latest disasters, in the city of Ketchikan, Alaska, came after several inches of rain fell during an atmospheric river that crossed over south- and south-central Alaska this past weekend. Loose soils destroyed part of a road and several homes, killing one man and disrupting the docking of several ships.

On the Radar

The drinking water supply on Long Island’s coastal Nassau County is at risk due to saltwater intrusion, a new USGS report suggests. Groundwater pumping for irrigation, drinking, and other household uses in the community has exceeded the rate at which wells have been replenished, allowing ocean water to seep into their place. Hotter temperatures, an effect of climate change, compounds the issue, evaporating water before it can replenish the supply, the New York Times reports. The issue could take “generations to reverse,” and seaside communities may be forced to dig wells further inland in order to meet their water needs.

More Water News

Oder River: In an effort to eradicate toxic golden algae blooms, which two years ago killed hundreds of thousands of fish, mussels, and snails in the river, officials are pumping hydrogen peroxide into the Oder’s tributaries, DW reports.

Subak: In Bali, priests are maintaining a series of water temples, which they use to practice the ancient, water-conserving rice irrigation technique called subak, Mongabay reports.

Christian Thorsberg

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.