But, the vast reservoir was built for far more than recreation. In fact, the massive Hoover Dam, which was completed in 1935, provides this desert region and surrounding states with a reliable water supply from the Colorado River as well as an excellent and inexpensive source of electricity.

Covering the state lines of Arizona and Nevada, Lake Mead stores water from the vast Colorado River, which runs through a whopping seven states – Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. So, to say that Lake Mead and the irreplaceable Colorado River are important to the citizens of the western states, would be a huge understatement.

However, for the past decade Lake Mead has been battling the worst 10-year drought in recorded history along the Colorado River, which feeds the 110-mile-long reservoir.

Since 1999, Lake Mead has dropped about 1 percent a year. It is estimated that by 2012, the lake’s surface could fall below the existing pipe that delivers 40 percent of Las Vegas’s water.

In 2000, the water level at Lake Mead was 1,214 feet, close to its all-time high, but it has been dropping ever since. When Lake Mead was built during the 1920s and 1930s, the western United States was experiencing one of the wettest periods of the past 1,200 years.

Even today, our so-called drought is still wetter than the average precipitation for the area averaged over centuries. In other words, for the past 75 years, we’ve had more moisture than we ever realized. And, we definitely took it for granted.

Farmers have been growing rice by flooding arid farmland with water from Lake Mead,  desert community residents have been maintaining lush front lawns, and avid golfers depend on green, healthy courses in areas where temperatures typically exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer.

A combination of a solid demand for Lake Mead’s thirst-quenching water and an ever-changing climate has resulted in a 100 foot drop in Mead’s water level since 2000. While that might not look like a great deal of water loss because it is just 10 percent under the lake’s 1983 high water mark, we have to remember that Lake Mead is like a martini glass.

The vast reservoir is wide at the top but narrow at the bottom. So that 10 percent loss of water actually represents a loss of half of Lake Mead’s water supply. This huge loss happened in just nine years – The lake went form 96 percent capacity to roughly 43 percent.

Amazingly, when full, Lake Mead can hold an astonishing 9.3 trillion gallons of water. This is an amount equal to the water that flows through the Colorado River in a two-year period.

And, this is water that is put to good use. Lake Mead’s life-sustaining water is used for many things. It irrigates a million acres of crops throughout the western United States and Mexico, and the reservoir supplies water to tens of millions of people.

The massive and mighty Hoover Dam generates enough electricity to power approximately a half-million homes. But that’s not all. The power from Hoover Dam is also used to transport water up and across the Sierra Nevada Mountains on its way to Southern California.

But, however, the lake continues to shrink. Lake Mead’s water level fell 14 feet last year, and the Bureau of Reclamation has projected the level will drop 14 more feet this summer. That will bring it perilously close to 1,075 feet, the point at which the federal government can step in and declare a drought condition, forcing a reduction of 400,000 acre-feet drawn from Lake Mead per year.

A typical Las Vegas home uses a half acre-foot of water per year, so such a reduction would be equal to turning the tap off for 800,000 households.
Going beyond the implications for residents living in areas supplied by Lake Mead, the water loss has ramifications for the local economy too. It was recently estimated that Lake Mead National Recreation Area, along with affiliated marine operators, were losing some where in the neighborhood of three million dollars for every ten foot of lake lost to this devastating drought.

Currently, Lake Mead’s water level is hanging close to 1095.26 feet above sea level. The end-of-year projection is now predicting that Lake Mead will drop several more feet below its current level. This is a huge loss considering the lake is considered full at 1,219 feet.

The year 2009 started out well as officials projected that Lake Mead could receive an additional one million acre-feet of water based on the snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunatly, however, the thaw did not translate into the expected runoff, and Lake Mead and the Colorado River’s water shortage problem marched on.

In 2008, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography issued their “When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?” report. The report said there is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead will dry up by the year 2021. If this happens, it could mean no more water, no more pumping and no more electricity for many, many people.

There is, however, some good news. Strong conservation efforts are helping this serious condition. For example, Southern Nevada has significantly reduced its water draw from 325,000 acre-feet a year in 2000 to 265,000 acre-feet in 2009. Even with this reduction, the grand Colorado River still remains over utilized.

This is easy to see when you consider that millions of acre-feet of H20 are rushed to California, Nevada, and Mexico each year. This continually drains and strains both Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell faster than either lake can be replenished.

Some of the conservation solutions and suggestions include “grass buyback” programs to convince residents of the benefits of installing drought-tolerant landscaping, tax incentives for swimming pool-covers as well as the inevitable water rate hikes.

One of the more radical ideas involves pumping water from the eastern United States, where many regions’ rivers have been inundated with extensive flooding, over the Rockies to the western, sweltering states. Another interesting proposal lies beyond the shores of California, where there is a vast, open ocean of water available for desalinization.
While these are possibly viable alternatives, the power and financial requirements for either proposal would be enormous.

Whatever the solution to the Lake Mead water crisis is, it is likely not going to be a simple one. If the drought-like conditions continue, action will likely need to be taken sooner rather than later in order to save the reservoir.

It might be discovered that the money and time it will take to quench the western United States’ thirst are like the water supply. They are all running short.

In the 1930s and 1940s people and businesses did not pay a lot of attention to what happened to toxic chemicals produced during industrial processes. While there have long been regulations for the handling of these dangerous chemicals, enforcement of these laws was virtually nonexistent or haphazard at best.

Large corporations, such as Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation in Niagara Falls, New York, made a variety of chemicals, pesticides and plastics. This type of company would typically seal the contaminated substances in 55-gallon metal drums and leave them someplace nearby.

For Hooker, Love Canal was a convenient place to store these metal drums.

The Love Canal neighborhood is in the southeast section of the La Salle area of Niagara Falls, New York. The neighborhood spans 36 square blocks in the southeastern corner of the city, along 99^th Street and Read Avenue. Two bodies of water, Bergholtz Creek and Niagara River, define the northern and southern boundaries of the neighborhood.

Love Canal was the dream of William T. Love, an 1890′s entrepreneur who wanted to develop a planned industrial community, Model City. Love’s idea was to take waters from the Niagara River and reroute it around the Niagara escarpment in order to produce cheap hydroelectric power.

Love’s dream was not to be and Model City was never constructed. However, work on the canal to transport waters from the Niagara River did happen. In 1942, Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation purchased the Love Canal site. This is where the contamination of Love Canal began.

Between 1942 and 1953 Hooker Chemical disposed of roughly 22,000 tons of mixed chemical wastes into Love Canal, all while children swam and played nearby. Eventually, Hooker stopped using this dumping site and the land was sold to the Niagara Falls School Board for a price of $1.00.

In 1955, the 99^th Street Elementary School was built on Love Canal property and was opened to students. Subsequent housing development of the area brought hundreds of families to this suburban, blue-collar neighborhood along the Love Canal.

As time passed, the neighborhood continued to flourish, as families found the idea of building a new home so close to an elementary school appealing. But, there were problems.

Many homeowners began noticing that their basements leaked. Some families started smelling strange chemical smells and seeing oddly-colored water in their basements. Unfortunately, only a few knew about Hooker’s history of chemical dumping.

A startling symptom that something was not right in the Love Canal neighborhood occurred in 1974, when one family’s backyard swimming pool rose two feet out of the ground. When the pool was removed, blue, purple and yellow chemicals quickly flooded in where the pool had been.

By 1977 and after two years of uncharacteristically heavy rain and snowfall, the former canal was turning into a marshland. With high groundwater levels, portions of the Hooker landfill subsided, 55-gallon drums surfaced, ponds became tainted, basements began to ooze an oily residue, and noxious chemical smells permeated the neighborhood.

Physical evidence of chemical corrosion of sump pumps and permeation of basement cinderblock walls was also obvious. Chemicals were now noticeably seeping into the surrounding streams and soil. City officials looked into different ways of dealing with this ever-growing pollution problem, but determined that the cost was too high and the project ended up being bogged down in red tape.

By this point, many residents were concerned. Not only were they concerned about health issues, they were worried about the plummeting value of their homes. Those who tried to sell their homes, couldn’t sell.

Something finally had to give. So, in August 1978 the results of local, state and federal testing of the air and water in Love Canal basements were made public. State Health Commissioner, Dr. Robert Whalen, made it known that Love Canal was a great and imminent peril to the health of the public.

He suggested that pregnant women and children under the age of two, whose homes abutted one end of the canal, leave their homes. Apparently, the studies provided indisputable evidence of an unusually high rate of birth defects and miscarriages.

This announcement not only enraged homeowners, it left them frightened and discouraged. Many residents made the conclusion that adults and older children throughout the neighborhood

might also be in at risk. It was at this time that the residents took things into their own hands. They organized the Love Canal Homeowners Association to inflict added pressure on officials to buy their contaminated homes.

Lois Gibbs was elected president of the Association. Gibbs, a 27-year-old housewife who lived just two short blocks away from the canal, had a tremendous gift for organizing residents and keeping the Love Canal crisis in the news.

Not long after the birth of the Associations, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a federal disaster site. This proclamation freed up funds for residents of the south end of the canal to relocate. This was great for these families; however, those families living in surrounding areas were left unable to move.

This outraged many because of the mounting evidence of elevated rates of cancer and other serious illnesses. Residents throughout the community began methodically testing substances in their homes, area streams and soil. What they found was a staggering list of dangerous chemicals. Some of the compounds detected were C-56 (a carcinogenic pesticide), toluene, benzene, and even PCBs (a known toxic chemical).

Subsequent studies conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry revealed a frighteningly long list of 421 chemical records for water, soil and air samples in and around the Love Canal neighborhood.

Gibbs decided to conduct a systematic and thorough health survey of all residents outside the approved evacuation area. What she found was not surprising. The survey turned up high rates of bladder and kidney ailments, miscarriages, birth defects and nervous disorders.

After six more months, the state finally agreed to pay for pregnant women and those with small children to be relocated to temporary homes, but it stipulated that these families were to return to Love Canal when their children were older. Frustrated and angered by this temporary relocation, residents continued to write letters, sign petitions and conduct public demonstrations to maintain public awareness of the crisis at Love Canal.

Finally, in 1980, the state of New York publicly confirmed what many residents had long suspected. Among the poisonous chemicals found at Love Canal was dioxin, one of the most intensely toxic substances ever created.

With this announcement, the state had no other choice and agreed to buy the nearby homes. After two years of worrying, activism and continued chemical exposure, the remaining homeowners were finally allowed to leave. This, however, wasn’t the end of the Love Canal story.

Only a decade had passed before the government put some of those very same houses on the market again. A new community of homeowners moved in despite the pollution controversy and debate about whether the Love Canal site was still dangerously contaminated with potentially deadly waste.

Today, 30 years after the pollution crisis, Love Canal is really two areas. Secure behind chain link fence, there is the capped dumpsite that once held entire streets of houses. And, just across the street and to the north is a reborn neighborhood called Black Creek Village. The Village is full of homes that were rehabilitated and sold by the state-formed Love Canal Revitalization Agency.

While the Love Canal environmental catastrophe may not be the worst hazardous waste site the world has ever seen, it is one of America’s most notorious. What transpired at Love Canal led to the development of the federal Superfund program, which aids in the cleanup of toxic waste sites that could pose significant risks to the health and well-being of those living, working and playing around these sites.

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Ground water near this former smelting operation in Midvale, Utah is contaminated by the 2.5 million tons of slag, containing dangerous heavy metals like lead, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium.

According to the EPA plan, the land will be beautified, but the groundwater will probably remain contaminated.

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The Midvale Slag site, a former smelting facility, covers 446 acres in Midvale. A small portion of the site extends into the city of Murray. The site contains slag and hazardous smelting wastes, posing a threat to human health and the environment. It was added to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1991. It is next to Sharon Steel, another Superfund site that has been cleaned up, which contained former ore-milling facilities.

The discovery that the Sharon Steel Corporation was polluting the environment came in 1982 when the Utah Department of Environmental Quality tested some Midvale children’s sandboxes which contained tailings from the plant. Upon testing, they discovered high levels of lead in the sand. Later, the US Geological Survey tested the town’s water supply and found high levels of arsenic as well as iron, manganese and zinc.

Smelting operations began in the vicinity of the site in 1871. Since then, five separate smelters have been located on or near the site. The smelters treated ores from Bingham Canyon and other mines.

Studies begun in 1984 found that ground water and soil are contaminated with heavy metals. Today there are 2.5 million tons of slag containing lead, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium, along with other smelting wastes. Potential human health threats include drinking contaminated shallow ground water, or swallowing, inhaling or handling contaminated soil and wastes.

Testing by the Utah Department of Health indicated that the slag contains high concentrations of arsenic and heavy metals. The slag is found on the surface and down to a depth of 20 feet. Hence there is a potential for ground water contamination. Several municipal wells serving an estimated 440,000 people are within 3 miles of the site.

The superfund clean-up plan states that the remedy will result in hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants remaining on the site. The groundwater will remained contaminated.

The City understands that the plan involves limited action on the ground water which includes ongoing monitoring of the plume and the levels of contaminates discharged into the Jordan River. Midvale is supportive of this alternative believing that it strikes the appropriate balance between the impacts of contaminated ground water on human health and the environment and a cost effective method to move the site forward to reuse.
–JoAnn B. Seghini, Midvale City Mayor source

The proposal contemplates virtually no action with respect to contaminated ground water on the east side of the Jordan River, but anticipates that the contaminated ground water will be allowed gradually to migrate into and be dispersed by the Jordan River over time. The proposal completely fails to account for the changes in ground water dynamics which will be caused as the uncontaminated portions of the shallow aquifer are developed over the next few years.
–Robert P. Hill, Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District source

The proposed plan naively assumes that flow rates and patterns in the shallow aquifer will remain unchanged for the next 300 years, notwithstanding the substantial development of drinking water wells in the aquifer that is already under way.
–David G. Ovard, Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District source

If this continues to remain a polluted area it not only harms the health of everyone, but also will continue to downgrade the area. This is not fair to anyone who believed Midvale as a vital part of the Salt Lake City Valley, and still believe could be a hub of the Valley, with various contributions from not only business, but from a lovely place in which to reside.
–Russ Becker, Ball Feed & Horse Supply

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For almost 40 years, beginning in the late 1940s, large quantities of uranium were mined on their land. Many Navajo still suffer related physical ailments. They are none too eager to open up their land to an industry they have been ravaged by, however safe and efficient they are told it will be. Unfortunately, they may have no choice. HRI has been working in conjunction with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to get a license to mine the land since the late 1990s, and it looks like they’re about to make a move.

The Navajo Nation covers a big piece of land, about 27,000 square miles, and stretches over parts of three states: Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. It is estimated to contain one of the largest uranium ore deposits in the world. That’s why, back in 1948, when the demand for uranium was high, the Navajo Nation seemed like a good place to get it. In addition to large deposits, the uranium in Navajo country is found in sandstone, making it ideal for the less invasive in situ method of extraction. Even this method is likely to create problems, however, according to the WISE Uranium Project. Among them: “the risk of spreading of leaching liquid outside of the uranium deposit, involving subsequent groundwater contamination; the unpredictable impact of the leaching liquid on the rock of the deposit; the impossibility of restoring natural groundwater conditions after completion of the leaching operations.” The report goes on to say “in-situ leaching releases considerable amounts of radon, and produces certain amounts of waste slurries and waste water during recovery of the uranium from the liquid.” No wonder the Navajo are worried. The land HRI plans to mine supplies the only source of drinking water for some 15,000 residents, many living below poverty level.

When HRI began their campaign to mine in Indian country they sent a request to the NRC. The NRC responded in March of 1997. Their response refers to an evaluation process that included a review of the environmental impact of the proposed mining project. The content of the review or Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) is not included as part of the docket entry, nor is it accessible online. Based on the FEIS, the NRC granted HRI a license to mine uranium, in situ, in McKinley County, New Mexico (aka: Indian country).

Interestingly, the Navajo people requested a complete study of the impact of uranium mining on the same stretch of land that they own. The study was never conducted. The rationale was that since uranium mining was not then taking place, there was no need to conduct such a study. This is despite the fact that “. . . Navajos have suffered from high cancer rates and respiratory problems. One study found that cancer rates among Navajo teenagers living near mine tailings are 17 times the national average. ”

The suffering of the Navajo due to uranium mining was so extreme it prompted Harry Tome, a Dineh activist, to work tirelessly throughout the 1980s to force the U.S. government to provide relief to minors and their families, who suffered as a result of the exposure to radiation. His efforts were long and arduous, largely because there were no extensive studies to document the full effects of the mining industry on the Indian nation. Still, in 1990, with the help of Stewart Udall (former U.S. Secretary of the Interior), the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed. Remediation programs covered in that act have still not been fully implemented. When HRI wanted to start mining again, they got their special study, and pronto. They even got the NRC to approve a mining license, and all without consulting the Navajo Nation Council.

HRI, a subsidiary of Uranium Resources, Inc. (URI) estimates that the area in question, which is located near two Navajo communities, Church Rock and Crownpoint, contains close to 100 million pounds of uranium. One can only imagine the kind of money that’s worth. So, in addition to working with the NRC, the folks at HRI have been actively recruiting Navajo residents to support their mining plan by offering large sums of money.

According to a recent airing of Democracy Now, HRI has coupled offers of big pay-outs with misleading propaganda campaigns designed to convince residents who live on the reservation there are no serious health risks to minors or their families. With no formal studies to prove HRI’s claims of safety suspect, those who stand to make a great deal of money are naturally leaning toward supporting the deal. This has, apparently, created a huge rift between those who fear the ultimate cost of allowing uranium mining and those who seek immediate compensation for the use of their land. Still, despite the contention among the Navajo, the Navajo Nation Council managed to pass a law banning uranium mining. One would think that would be the end of that. It is their country, after all. Or is it?

In January 2006, HRI submitted a request to the NRC suggesting that the land HRI wishes to mine be reclassified as “not Indian country under 18 U.S.C.§ 1151(b)…”. If the NRC grants the request, the land in Church Rock (referenced in the letter as “HRI’s Church Rock”) would be under the jurisdiction of the State of New Mexico, making any laws passed by the Navajo Nation, regarding the use of the land, inapplicable. And once again uranium mining will take place in Indian country.
Check-mate.

Karimov’s human rights record is abysmal. He has been known to boil political dissenters alive. He has repressed religious rights, ostensibly as part of the war on terror. When it comes to human rights in Uzbekistan, there aren’t any. Karimov has detained human rights workers and ordered his troops to fire into crowds of demonstrators. Political opponents end up in prison and are tortured or killed.

The violent restriction of human rights grows from the paranoia so commonly seen among totalitarian dictators. Karimov even banned the playing of billiards because he was afraid that people would talk about politics while playing. While that may sound humourous, it goes a long way towards demonstrating the depth of Karimov’s paranoia.

Despite all of the well-documented problems in Uzbekistan over a decade of Karimov’s rule, the United States and allies such as Britain welcomed Karimov into the war against terror. In exchange for military aid, the US received the use of the Karshi-Khanabad air base and facilities for 800 US troops. The Bush administration ignored criticism of having such a brutal regime as an ally until last year.

Even with the criticism of their relationship with Karimov, a relationship that echoed the Reagan administration’s relationship with Saddam Hussein, The US maintained a relationship with Uzbekistan while choosing to ignore Karimov’s abuses in exchange for his cooperation. While the need for an ally in the war on terror is often cited, Uzbekistan is strategically located between Russia and China and has sizable natural gas reserves, estimated in 2005 to be 1.875 trillion cubic meters, and a small amount of oil. Considering the strategic importance of energy in the area, relations with Uzbekistan could have more to do with natural gas reserves than the war on terror.

The relationship between Uzbekistan and the US, as well the European Union did finally begin to sour in 2005, however. A small armed uprising in the province of Andizhan was followed by a large, peaceful demonstration. Reports vary, and there may or may not have been a few armed militants among the protestors, but the Uzbek military responded to the demonstration by firing into the crowd. The true extent of the casualties is not known, but human rights experts have responded to the incident as being on a par with the Tiananmen Square massacre. The government crackdown on political opponents and human rights advocates since the massacre is brutal and repressive, with torture, disappearances, and politically-motivated murder becoming commonplace.

After the incident in Andizhan, pressure began to grow in the EU for sanctions to be put in place against Uzbekistan and the accounts of officials in the Karimov regime frozen, although no comprehensive action was taken. There was little reaction in the United States, with aid ( $91.6 million in 2005) continuing to flow, but some harsh words about human rights from the Bush administration caused Karimov to kick the US military out of the Karshi-Khanabad air base. Since that time, both Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Congressman Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey) have introduced bills calling for an end to all aid to Uzbekistan and the freezing of foreign accounts and travel restrictions for Uzbek officials.

Karimov is now currying favour with Russia and China, who have far less interest in human rights abuses than western countries claim to have, and are even more likely to ignore, or partake in, gross abuses to gain access to energy reserves or strategic military advantage.

The spectre of further human rights abuses and the poverty that is so pervasive under totalitarian regimes points to an unhappy future for the people of Uzbekistan, but making things worse is trying to eke out a living in a country that has suffered serious environmental damage.

During the Soviet era the excessive use herbicides, pesticides, defoliants, and other chemicals combined with the diversion of water for irrigation from two major rivers devastated the environment. The diversion of the Amu Darya and Syrdariya Rivers has caused the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth largest inland body of fresh water, to shrink in size. The Aral Sea is now less than half the size it was in the 1960s, holding only about one third of the water it once did.

Widespread irrigation has contaminated what water still exists with agricultural chemicals. Naturally occurring soil salt, has become concentrated from excessive irrigation. The dried lake bed where large portions of the Aral Sea used to be now produces dust storms full of agricultural and industrial chemicals which, combined with the salt, blow for up to 800 miles. The contaminated dust in these storms kills plant life, causing desrtification.

The environmental devastation continues. Although Uzbekistan is a signatory to several environmental treaties, including clean air and water agreements and the Kyoto protocol, less than half of the smokestacks in the country have filtration devices. The most common method of chemical disposal remains dumping it into a rudimentary sewer system if one exists in the area.. Only about 50% of urban areas and 25% of rural villages have sewers in Afghanistan, so chemicals are often just dumped in the nearest ditch or river.

The result is that most of the underground water supplies are contaminated and the rivers and ditches are basically open sewers. Water-borne illness is common and chemical-related disease is not unusual. Respiratory illness is common in both rural and urban areas.

All indications are that the environmental situation will continue to worsen under the reign of Islam Karimov. Those who speak out against it risk imprisonment, torture, and death. Complaints from international agencies have little impact on the Karimov regime and local activists are silenced, so the environmental issues worsen with the human rights abuses.

There is no end in sight to the suffering of the people of Uzbekistan. The west failed to help them for strategic and economic reasons. Russia and China have shown even less of a compunction to use their influence to better human rights or environmental conditions. Unless some way is found to intervene, Uzbekistan will continue to be one of the worst places on earth in the foreseeable future.

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.

You may have heard that it’s getting more difficult to see the view in Grand Canyon National Park. The Department of the Interior first complained about the air quality there in 1985. It keeps getting worse. You’re looking at the reason why.

It turns out there is such a thing as a coal pipeline. This seems to me like such a bad idea I can barely get my mind around the fact that they actually build them. This one is currently the world’s largest, and it’s been in operation since 1970.

This is where the pipeline ends: At the the massive generating station and slurry ponds just over the border in Laughlin, Nevada. About half of the electricity from the Mohave Generating Station goes to Southern California. The other half goes to Las Vegas.

Connecting from the generating station to the Black Mesa Coal Mine on the Hopi reservation, a distance of 275 miles, is an 18-inch diameter pipeline for coal slurry: a mix of pulverized coal and water in a ratio of 1:1 by weight.

It starts here, at the Kayenta open pit mine, operated by Peabody, the largest coal company in the world. If you’ve visited the Hoover Dam, you’ve been only a few miles from this site. They probably didn’t mention it on the tour.

In 1967, Peabody Coal negotiated the mining rights to the Black Mesa with a Mormon named John Boyden, who represented the Hopi while himself secretly on the payroll of the coal company.

The Hopi sued in federal court to get the lease overturned, but the court ruled that the Hopi, in effectively suing themselves, were violating their tribe’s own sovereign immunity to lawsuit.

It’s almost unimaginable how much water this coal pipeline requires. The company admits to about 4000 acre-feet a year, but it’s probably higher: the Hopi agreed to almost unlimited water withdrawal from the aquifer, back in ’67. They have since rethought that agreement as their water dries up.

Four thousand acre-feet is around one and a half billion gallons, or six million tons of water. Every year. Since 1970.

All of that is fossil water pumped from the deep aquifer. None of the water is recovered. It’s grossly contaminated by the time the coal is ‘de-watered’ in the huge black slurry ponds at the end of the line.

Of course the mine itself, and the smokestacks at the generating station, and the mercury-laced alkali ash produced by the burning, are all environmental nightmares in their own right. But this pipe just freaks me out.

Thanks to Nat Vaprin.