Controversy
For more details on lead contamination in the early 2000s, see Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water and Marc Edwards (civil engineering professor).In 2001, water supplied by the Authority was found to contain lead levels of at least 1,250 parts per billion (ppb)—about 83 times higher than the accepted safe level of 15 ppb. The discovery was made by Marc Edwards, a civil engineering professor specializing in plumbing who DC Water had hired to investigate complaints of plumbing corrosion. DC Water threatened to cut off Edwards's funding unless he abandoned his investigation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report dismissing the idea of health risks from the water.
The story was picked up by the Washington Post, which ran front-page stories about the problem in January 2004. This led to a Congressional investigation, which found that the CDC had made "scientifically indefensible" claims about the lack of health effects from the lead in DC's water supply.
The problem was traced to the Washington Aqueduct decision to replace the chlorine used to treat the water with chloramine, a similar chemical. Chloramine picks up lead from pipes and solder, keeping it dissolved in the water throughout the system.
In 2010, the CDC said that 15,000 homes in the DC area might still have water supplies with dangerous levels of lead.
Read more about this topic: District Of Columbia Water And Sewer Authority
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)