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Louisiana teachers' union concerned about educators' future; Supreme Court hears arguments in Trump immunity case; Court issues restraining order against fracking waste-storage facility; Landmark NE agreement takes a proactive approach to CO2 pipeline risks.

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Speaker Johnson accuses demonstrating students of getting support from Hamas. TikTok says it'll challenge the ban. And the Supreme Court dives into the gray area between abortion and pregnancy healthcare, and into former President Trump's broad immunity claims

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The urban-rural death divide is widening for working-age Americans, many home internet connections established for rural students during COVID have been broken, and a new federal rule aims to put the "public" back in public lands.

Report Fits WV Tap-Water Safety Issues into National Pattern

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Monday, September 30, 2019   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The latest report on unsafe tap water confirms some of West Virginia's drinking water problems - and puts them in a national context. According to the "Watered Down Justice" survey by the Natural Resources Defense Council, two-thirds of West Virginia counties rate poorly for public water systems safety violations, and three quarters are slow to get the issues fixed.

Pam Nixon is president at People Concerned About Chemical Safety. She said the state has 125 water systems, many of them tiny.

"And when you have such small populations that these water systems are serving, you find that these small systems struggle with just maintaining, much less trying to improve, their infrastructure,” Nixon said.

In reporting on these problems, the Charleston Gazette-Mail found communities that have been under "boil water" warnings for more than 15 years. The Watered Down Justice snapshot found nationally, such concerns are much more common in low-income, rural and minority communities. The report found the water systems serving these areas suffer from a lack of investment.

After the Elk River chemical spill, Nixon said her organization recommended the state budget $40 million a year to help communities catch up on water-system repairs and improvements. She said they also have recommended consolidating the systems and reducing the amount of pollution released into the waterways.

"There would be less pollution going into the water, which means the public water systems will not have to work as hard trying to filter out or remove a lot of the impurities that would be going into the drinking water,” she said.

The report looked at three years of violations under the Safe Drinking Water Act. People Concerned About Chemical Safety was one of four environmental groups to take part in the work.


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