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If Sen. Merkeley is truly pursuing  administrative, not legislative relief, that is indeed the way to go. The new head of the EPA clearly said that science, not politics, would the basis for decisions. The LT2 rule, as I understand it, was promulgated by a committee headed by T. Rhodes Trussell whose Pasadena, CA environmental firm which works in the "water world",  would benefit hugely.

 I lived in   Bangladesh,  and once drank surface well-water served by a Brahmin priest (felt it would be rude not to drink it) and threw up suddenly the next day.  I obviously had been travelling outside the capital enough that I lived to tell the tale. Even in Bangladesh, so wet and lowlying they will be flooded by global warming and the rise of the oceans,  are suffering hugely now because their drinking water wells have had to go so deep the amount of natural arsenic is poisoning them.

  I also lived for several years in Bangkok   and 2 years in Buenos Aires and have seen how very spoiled we U.S. citizens are by our all-too-cheap and wasteful use of incredibly safe tap water . The Milwaukee Wisconsin episode was a one-time-only highly unusual event, my Chicago sister who has worked as an environmental engineer for 55-years tells me. Her observation re the filtration system first proposed for Portland: it would be cheaper to put a filter on every individual tap. She is not the only person to understand that - a Ph.D. in the field said that years ago here and was laughed at.

  The LT2 rule also affects Rochester NY with its Cobbs Hill open reservoir- one of the 40 in the U.S.  A fellow  activist friend of mine working on water issues when I lived in Western New York couldn't convince them to join Portland in the lawsuit over LT2. A far larger New York  situation, that of New York City is discussed in "BOTTLEMANIA:How Water Went On Sale And Why We Bought It" by Elizabeth Royte. She discusses much more than the ridiculous use of bottled water. Her well-researched and beautifully written short book published last year discusses the whole topic of U.S. drinking water.  This topnotch  journalist's work has appeared in The New Yorker,  N.Y. Times Magazine and national Geographic. I can hardly wait to read her previous "GARBAGELAND" and "THE TAPIR"S MORNING BATH"(which I just bought cheaply secondhand.)

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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