America’s toxic tap water problem
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Summary
Despite being the world’s wealthiest nation, the U.S. has communities that are still exposed to toxic tap water. Today, we hear how a city in New Mexico has struggled with high levels of arsenic in its water — and how its residents are fighting back.
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Fifty years after the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act, which is supposed to limit toxins in Americans’ water, many people around the country cannot safely drink from the tap.
Drinking water samples tested in Sunland Park, a small New Mexico city, found illegally high levels of arsenic in each of the past 16 years. In 2016, levels reached five times the legal limit.
The city also reflects parts of the United States — low-income areas and Latino communities — that are particularly exposed to arsenic in their drinking water at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group, even when controlling for socioeconomic factors.
In Sunland Park, residents’ complaints have mounted in recent months, and some are taking the first steps toward filing a lawsuit.
Today on “Post Reports,” we talk to investigative reporter Silvia Foster-Frau about her reporting from New Mexico and why problems with toxic water there — and elsewhere in the country — persist.
Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Maggie Penman and Monica Campbell and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm a volunteer with in Congress. |
| 0:10.0 | Sylvia Foster Frau is an investigative reporter for the post. |
| 0:14.0 | In March, she spent a day knocking on doors in southern New Mexico with a group of local |
| 0:19.1 | organizers called Empowerment Congress. |
| 0:22.3 | And Maria Alvarado was one of the first folks |
| 0:24.6 | who they approached. |
| 0:26.0 | They literally went up to the gate in front of her home. |
| 0:29.7 | And she was out there with her son |
| 0:31.7 | and called her over and started kind of filling out the questionnaire. |
| 0:36.0 | The first question they usually asked was like an open-ended, like is there anything about the government or the services that you feel like could be better and everyone always mentioned the water. |
| 0:48.0 | How do you think our public service providers and local government is treating us. |
| 0:54.0 | Well, so far, so good except for the water part. |
| 0:58.0 | So this was all happening in Sunland Park, New Mexico, which is a small city in the south of the state and it's right there in this little wedge that borders Texas and Mexico. |
| 1:10.0 | And that's where in December, this kind of uproar was caused over the water quality. |
| 1:16.0 | Slimy and slick water conditions. |
| 1:19.0 | That is how some residents in Santa Teresa and Sunland Park are describing the water coming out of their faucets and their showers. |
| 1:25.6 | What happened was caustic soda from one of the arsenic treatment plants was being pumped into the water and it's typically done that to help remove |
| 1:35.2 | the arsenic but what happened is it malfunctioned and basically too much of it was poured into |
| 1:39.8 | the water and it caused a really oily gooey substance to emerge from the taps and so |
| 1:46.2 | people started noticing it and they raised alarms about it and it took a few days |
| 1:50.6 | before the water utility notified the community that indeed it was not safe for |
| 1:56.4 | them to be drinking it and then it took another few days for them to actually fix it. |
... |
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