Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2010

Johnston might aid Wake subdivision

In Hialeah subdivision, people live in fear of contaminated water while state fines threaten to put their ancient, indebted communal well out of service.

With their backs to the wall, the community's 60-odd residents have turned to local governments for help.

Last month, the Johnston County Board of Commissioners took steps toward extending a water line to Hialeah, which is just inside Wake County's borders. A state grant, if awarded, would cover the $350,000 cost.

"This is serious business for those poor people up there in that subdivision," Tim Broome, the county's director of public utilities, told commissioners. "There's things in this water that they don't need to be taking showers in."

The sheath of test results and warnings from the state finally piled high enough that Lee and Billie Jean Williams stopped drinking the tap water in their home early last year.

"We ain't been drinking it in a long time," said Lee Williams, 69. "I don't trust it."

Lee and Billie Jean, 66, fear that contaminants in their water could aggravate the cancers that both suffer. In the past, the system has been shut down for days or weeks at a time for unsafe conditions, according to a memo from Broome.

In recent years, Hialeah's two communal wells have tested positive for lead, copper, phthalates and adipates. The latter two are chemicals often used to make plastics more flexible. Since 2005, at least two tests have registered phthalate levels above the Environmental Protection Agency's recommendations for safe drinking water.

"We've had problems, but things got worse," said Billie Jean Williams. "I really got afraid of it last year."

Phthalates and adipates, or plasticizers as they're known, usually come from factory discharges, while the lead and copper likely came from old pipes in the water system, which is between 70 and 100 years old. But no matter the source, the solution is expensive.

A fix could cost $30,000, and the water system is already $2,000 in debt, said Ruby Knowles, a resident and administrator for the well system. Hialeah's neighbors pay $35 a month for water service, but that's barely enough to cover testing and maintenance fees.

"The cost of treatment systems for two wells is prohibitive to the residents ... and does not address the long-term requirements for a safe drinking-water system," Broome wrote in a memo.

Hialeah residents, seeing few other options, approached the Town of Garner, Wake County, the City of Raleigh and a private water supplier and asked to become customers of their respective water services.

Aqua North Carolina, a nearby private supplier, didn't have extra capacity for the 25 homes, and Wake County does not operate a water service.

So after several meetings, the governments decided that Johnston County had the closest water lines and was the best candidate for the job, said Greg Bright, supervisor of the groundwater program for Wake County.

Raleigh was "going to be the most expensive; their lines were the furthest away," Bright said.

At the Johnston County Commissioners' meeting, Broome was not so gentle. Hialeah residents "have pleaded for help from the state, they've come to us," he said. "Raleigh, they're not interested in providing any help."

The subdivision is inside Wake County but lies outside of the Garner town limits and outside the City of Raleigh's water-service area. It's a few miles outside Clayton, near East Garner and Rock Quarry roads. Raleigh's official position is that a line extension isn't consistent with its growth plans, according to a memo from Broome to Johnston County Commissioners.

Robert Massengill, assistant director of public utilities for Raleigh, said that city officials knew the problem was serious. Johnston County would take on the project because it was the cheapest option, he said.

The state has not declared the contamination a human health hazard, but officials in Johnston and Wake hope a grant from the state's Division of Environmental Health will pay for a water line from Johnston to the subdivision. The pipe would deliver 5,000 to 6,000 gallons of water per day, and residents would pay for water service.

In many cases, communities must pay the cost of water-service extensions. But "this is a humanitarian request," Broome told Johnston commissioners, who didn't object to his request to pursue the project. Broome said the county could have the grant within 45 days and have inter-county logistics worked out with Wake County by May or June.

Johnston County will not proceed with the project unless the grant is a lock, Broome said.

Meanwhile, some people in Hialeah are impatient and afraid.

Lee Williams and his wife buy $15 worth of bottled water each week, which they use for both cooking and drinking. Lee Williams said his doctor told him not to drink the water for fear that it would aggravate his health problems.

And besides the potential health hazard, the contamination hurts property values in the subdivision, Williams said. "You can't sell a house with no water," he said.

It isn't clear just how dangerous the contaminants are. The EPA says prolonged exposure to the plasticizers might cause increased cancer rates and liver and reproductive problems. However, the EPA only says those health problems have appeared in people with long-term exposure to the chemicals at levels well above the EPA's recommended limits. In Hialeah, the contamination has rarely spiked above EPA guidelines.

"A one-time little spike is not considered to be harmful," said Allen Hardy, assistant supervisor at the state's public water supply section "With just the values I've looked at, I wouldn't see the harm from drinking that."

Still, the warning notices pile up, and residents and local officials say the contamination is a serious problem. And though not everyone fears the tap, potential state fines, and mounting repair costs and debts threaten to put the well system out of business -- and Hialeah out of water.