Sprol

Roughly 35 miles southwest of Indianapolis rests the city of Martinsville, Indiana. This Midwestern city of just 12,000 is dealing with a massive drinking water catastrophe that will likely take years, plus possibly millions of dollars, to clean up.

Martinsville, once known as the “City Of Mineral Water,” must now slog down a long, soiled, and expensive road in order to recover and reclaim healthy, chemical-free drinking water.

This historic nickname, “City of Mineral Water,” can still be seen atop one of Martinsville’s oldest buildings. And, actually, for those of us living in and around Martinsville, the classic neon sign is really just a sad reminder of one of the things that made Martinsville so well known.

For century’s people from around the country, not just Hoosiers, flocked to the popular sanitariums and spas for rest, relaxation, and quiet retreat. The waters of these trademark spas and sanitariums once offered alleged yet accepted healing powers. People would actually travel from far away for the opportunity to soak in these healing, therapeutic waters.

The trend of spas and sanitariums, however, has been forced to take a back seat to a more pressing, health-threatening problem.

The aquifer that supplies Martinsville’s citizens with clean, untainted drinking water has been poisoned by a most toxic, yet unsuspected, villain – industrial dry-cleaning solvents. Some 13 years after a well-known industrial dry cleaner closed its doors, a suspected cancer-inducing agent has soaked and saturated approximately 40 feet into the city’s ground water.

Local, state, and even federal authorities had been aware of the possible contamination for years. It was long suspected that the former industrial dry cleaner, Masterwear Corp., polluted the city’s air, fouled the fresh water supply, and dirtied the soil directly behind the plant with dangerous cleaning solvents. Perchloroethylene, also known as PCE, Perc, and tetrachloroethylene, is the primary, most threatening pollutant. Masterwear commonly used this high-powered chemical when cleaning oil from the gloves and towels used by various industries and factories.

PCE is a powerful solvent that is blamed for the contamination of many other dry-cleaning sites throughout the entire United States. This high powered solvent – officially known of as Cl2C=CCl2 – can potentially inflict a wide array of symptoms and health problems. In effect, PCE is considered a central nervous system depressant.

So, if, for whatever reason, you inhale elevated levels of this toxic solvent’s vapors, you will end up with headaches, dizziness, sleepiness, nausea, confusion, difficulty speaking and walking, and possibly even unconsciousness and death. If repeated skin contact occurs, PCE may start to dissolve your skin’s fats which will eventually leave you with severe skin irritation. The key, obviously, is to not consistently work with, inhale large amounts of, or ingest PCE – accidentally through legitimate work or intentionally as a way to get “high.”

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) confirms that PCE can reasonably be considered a dangerous carcinogen. In laboratory tests, PCE gives cancerous kidney tumors to male rats and malignant liver tumors to mice. If small rodents can get cancer from PCE in laboratory tests, don’t you think it’s possible for you and me to get sick from drinking PCE-laced water?

For those living in Martinsville and unquestioningly drinking water from any one of the city’s three drinking-water wells, the level of PCE contamination came as quite a shock. In fact, no one, citizen or official, ever really tried to guess the extent of the pollution caused by Masterwear’s presence all those years ago. That is, everyone accepted that there had been some level of contamination due to Masterwear’s operation, and it was not until December of 2002 that Martinsville got a real wake up call.

As 2002 was coming to a close, it was finally discovered that the dangerous PCE toxin had actually reached two of the town’s three drinking water wells. One of the wells was actually so poisoned and impure that it had to be shut down – immediately, without delay.

State inspectors have come to the conclusion that large drums containing the PCE-contaminated oils and various other chemicals were heaped and piled right on top of the bare, naked ground located right behind the facility. Over time, these nasty bombs began to rust and eventually began leaking into the unprotected ground. The end result, of course, occurred when the carcinogenic mixture bled into the ground and was, in the end, carried by groundwater to the city’s drinking water wells. When the damage was realized, the groundwater had actually transported the PCE more than a mile before it came to reside in Martinsville’s drinking supply.

So now, the people of Martinsville are left to clean up the mess left by those that irresponsibly ran Masterwear Corp some 13 years ago. When everything is complete, when all of the clean up is done, the city of Martinsville is looking at an estimated bill of approximately five million dollars.

For the once well-known “City of Mineral Water,” water is again a major topic of conversation. A major point of interest. However, instead of gaining popularity for possessing healing, therapeutic spas and sanitariums, Martinsville has earned a new reputation – The home of yet another Indiana superfund site.

And, as far as the condition of the drinking water in and around the Martinsville area, city officials say the water is safe for now, but the long-term solution is still drilling new wells.

For those of us living close to Martinsville, it may be particularly interesting to note that PCE levels up to 270,000 parts per billion (ppb) have been measured in the soil just beneath what is now a paved parking lot in Martinsville. And, levels of the carcinogenic solvent that are being detected in the groundwater beneath the previous site of Masterwear Corporation have been measured as high as 20,000 ppb.

The state of Indiana’s standard for drinking water allows just 5 ppb of PCE.

The clear and present danger is evident. It is not gone. It has not been “taken care of,” nor can it be swept under the rug…….much is left to do.

Although Martinsville, Indiana is not thought of as a “hot spot” for environmental disasters, it is very important to remember that there are other Masterwear-type corporations all over the United States. These inconspicuous polluters are good at flying just below the radar screen and are not always well-known. Many companies who are secretly getting away with contaminating the earth do not even have a reputation for polluting the environment or contributing to the health problems of those trusting individuals who work for and/or live nearby them.

Therefore, beware. There may be another Masterwear Corp. lurking in your neighborhood or in the neighborhood of someone you hold dear.