New Report: Nitrates in Water Are "Imminent threat to human health"

Kate Golden has the latest in the Failure at the Faucet series by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting.

Golden's piece reports on a particularly disturbing aspect of Wisconsin's water crisis pointing to nitrates in drinking water, and Blue Baby syndrome.

Writes Golden:

Among those with water contaminated by nitrate are Sherryl and Doug Jones of rural Spring Green.

About eight years ago, water from their private well tested at 20 milligrams of nitrate per liter of water — twice the health limit. Sherryl Jones said the couple initially switched to bottled water and, since 2012, they have been using a reverse osmosis system to remove nitrate at a cost of about $25 a month. Reverse osmosis removes nitrate and other contaminants by using high pressure to push water through a semipermeable membrane.

'We had children, we had babies in our house, we had a pregnant daughter, we had pregnant daughters-in-law. What was this (water) doing? There was no way we could let them drink this water,' Sherryl Jones recalled.

Jones said she urged neighbors to get their water tested, too. The result: Some of them had been drinking water with four times the health limit of nitrate. In fact, testing by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Center for Watershed Science and Education found 31 percent of the private well samples collected in the Spring Green area had nitrate levels above the health standard.

As the Scott Walker administration sells out the very lifeblood of Wisconsin citizens by refusing to protect water, all parents can do is make sure their babies drink bottled water as Wisconsin remains on a trajectory that will inescapably lead to trajedy.