Do you live in the Carpenter-Ridgeway Neighborhood? The Eken Park Neighborhood? The Emerson East Neighborhood? If Yes, then your kitchen tap water probably has a tiny bit of the ‘likely’ cancer-causing chemical PERC in it.
Thursday March 10 the City is holding a public meeting to talk about the small amounts of PERC in east side drinking water and what to do about it.
Attached is a copy of the meeting announcement.
The meeting is at 6:30 PM at the City of Madison Streets East Lunch Room,
4602 Sycamore Avenue – off N. Thompson Drive – N of Hwy 30.PERC is also known as PCE, tetrachloroethylene or perchloroethylene.
If you Google “PERC cancer” you get 192,000 Results (give or take), should you get the urge to brush up on PERC prior to the meeting Thursday.
Well 15 is behind Kinko’s-Einstein Bagels, just off East Wash, near Lien Road.
If you scroll down to the map below, you’ll see Well 15 water goes to pretty much the entire East High-Ella’s Deli-Carpenter-Ridgeway side of East Wash – to the Yahara River – plus some areas on the E side of East Wash also. I’ll send you separately a slightly different map that shows where Well 15 water goes in winter; it’s a slightly larger area.
The legal limit – ‘maximum allowable’ – for PERC in drinking water is 5.0 parts per billion. (The EPA has discussed possibly lowering that to 2.0 in future.) The public health Goal for PERC in drinking water is 0.0 (none). The water coming out of Well 15 is below the 5.0 max. limit; in 2008, for example, it ranged between 3.1 – 3.5 parts per billion.
I know how bad the water was when living on 6th street, I had seen thick mucus come out of my faucet and so did my daughter it looked like goo, so I bought water to drink it was scarey thinking we lived in the neighborhood for 15 years, Glad to have my own well now and have it checked regularly . Feel the city owes everyone $$
Tetrachloroethylene can be broken down to more toxic metabolites including the human carcinogen, vinyl chloride. In groundwater formations, reductive dechlorination can be impeded by several factors resulting in production of vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene, and other toxins without further degradation to non-toxic products.
As for having one’s own well, I urge homeowners to check that toxic pollutants are screened for. Most well sampling programs do not address synthetic pollutants such as solvents and pesticides.
Drinker beware.
The most disturbing thing I heard Mayor’s chosen head of the Water Utility Board this past year was after science types spoke out of concern of what chemicals could do to the body, the white male chair pretended to act as if he took their testimony under consideration; then he said that there is no proof. He said that he had to follow what the mayor wanted to do.
I think the Water issue is an issue Soglin is failing to point out. Under this mayor our water has become questionable.
The water ignorance under “do what the Mayor wants” when the mayor clearly is not brilliant nor inquisitive is going to leave us with unclean water.
The whole issue reflects the ultimate danger of this current mayor’s bully practices.