The NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute Is Ignoring Pharmaceuticals, Endocrine Disruptors, and Hundreds of Toxic Chemicals They KNOW Are In Your Drinking Water

Lets DEP Regulators And Corporate Water Companies Off The Hook

DWQI And DEP Ignore Their Own Recommendation To Shift Towards “A Treatment Based Approach”

The DWQI shift in focus to algae blooms suggests a corporate polluters’ strategic preemptive strike on the DWQI to prevent them from developing any more new drinking water standards for hundreds of unregulated chemicals that they KNOW are present in your drinking water, including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, and hundreds of other toxic chemicals.

In another example of journalistic malpractice, NJ Spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle recently reported favorably (twice!) on a shift in focus by the NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute (DWQI) from recommending drinking water standards for toxic industrial chemicals to a focus on natural algae blooms, see:

• Water panel targets toxic algal blooms
• Water experts look to prevent algal blooms

Algae blooms don’t have high powered corporate lobbyists and lawyers and they don’t make political campaign contributions to politicians – like NJ based Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Jansen, Dupont, 3M, Monsanto, et al do.

Those same corporations dole out a lot of money to Foundations – who fund environmental groups and media – so it is no surprise that environmental groups are not working on the issues and media writes cover stories to divert attention from the public health risks and impacts of these chemicals.

Algae blooms are a very easy target of regulators, compared to the war that is waged by major corporate polluters to block regulation of their toxic pollution.

Contrary to the cover story that Mr. Hurdle reports, I’m fairly sure that this shift in focus by the DWQI is a result of pushback for their recent work on Dupont and 3M manufactured “forever chemicals”.

The shit is now hitting the fan as water systems across the state report violations of those standards, which were recently adopted by DEP. And in even more journalistic malpractice, Mr. Hurdle is reporting on only one water system, Middlesex Water Co.

Strangely, Hurdle has written 5 stories on that single water system, while I’ve written about and given him DEP enforcement data that at least 50 systems are in violation, including 17 public water supply systems and 11 schools.

More importantly, the DWQI shift in focus to algae blooms is a strategic preemptive strike on the DWQI to prevent them from developing any more new drinking water standards for hundreds of unregulated chemicals that they KNOW are present in your drinking water, including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, and hundreds of other toxic chemicals.

This includes the failure of the Murphy DEP to adopt drinking water standards for Perchlorate, standards that were proposed by the Corzine DEP but killed by the Christie Executive Order and DEP Commissioner Bob Martin, see:

• NJ Residents Are Still Drinking Rocket Fuel In Tap Water

This includes DEP’s failure to adopt drinking water standards for more than a dozen toxic chemicals previously recommended by the DWQI – see this page for prior DWQI recommendation for MCLs for hazardous chemicals  that DEP has not acted upon.

This includes unregulated pharmaceuticals that the DWQI and DEP KNOW are in your drinking water, see:

• USGS Study Documents High Levels of Prescription Drugs In Streams – Source is Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plants
• Manufacturing Facilities Release Pharmaceuticals to the Environment (USGS)

This includes unregulated class of chemicals known as “endocrine disruptors” that USGS documented in NJ drinking water, see:

• Endocrine Disruptor Study Buried At The Pinelands Commission

Finally, the shift in focus to algae conveniently obscures a crucially important prior April 2010 DEP Report to the Drinking Water Quality Institute, see:

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (Department) is focusing on new approaches to address the occurrence of unregulated contaminants found in drinking water throughout the State. These chemicals may be present individually or as mixtures, they are present at low concentrations, and little if any toxicity information is available for most of them. Discussions on possible new approaches for addressing their occurrence began in the 1990s when synthetic organic contaminants were discovered in a water system supplied by groundwater. Subsequently, many additional studies in the State have been conducted, and the Department is currently investigating the possibility of a “treatment technique” approach to regulating mixtures of organic chemicals in drinking water, as summarized below

Implementation of a DEP’s recommended “Treatment Based Approach” would cost private water companies hundreds of millions of dollars, which they would likely recover from lawsuits against the corporate polluters who poisoned the public water supply source water.

So, of course it was opposed by those powerful corporate interests.

The DEP initially solicited formal public comments on this new regulatory strategy and “treatment based approach” way back in 2004 (see NJ Register Public Notice), but never followed through on it.

That DEP 2010 “treatment based approach” policy paper is based on several prior and ongoing DEP research projects, most of which focused on important questions, including:

The overall objective of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of conventional and advanced water treatment processes for the removal of unregulated organic chemicals (UOCs) such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products and industrial and household use organic chemicals from surface water systems. Specifically, this research is designed to answer several questions including: 1) What UOCs are removed by conventional water treatment processes? 2) What additional UOCs are removed with advanced processes such as GAC and ozone? 3) What per cent removal can be achieved with conventional and conventional plus advanced processes? 4) What process design parameters and operating conditions are associated with these removals? 5) How effective are current analytical methods in quantifying low levels of UOCs? 6) Is it plausible for NJ to consider a “treatment-based” regulatory approach for managing UOCs in drinking water in the state?

DEP found that there are over 500 unregulated toxic chemicals in NJ drinking water and “little if any toxicity information is available for most of them.”

DEP and the DWQI are flying blind. The public has no idea if their drinking water is “safe”.

For over a decade, DEP has known that treatment can remove the unregulated chemicals known to be present in your drinking water and yet done nothing.

More recently, back in November, the DWQI solicited public comments on recommendations for how to improve regulation of drinking water or which chemicals they should prioritize for MCL development.

We wrote to recommend that DWQI and the DEP finally implement the April 2010 recommended shift to a “treatment based approach” see:

• NJ Drinking Water Quality Institute Seeking Public Input On How To Regulate Chemicals

Remarkably, instead of doing that and taking on the huge battle with Big Pharma, Petro-Chemical and private water companies that would entail, the DWQI folded the tent and shifted to algae blooms.

And Jon Hurdle at NJ Spotlight cheered that cowardly and irresponsible shift.

Who will the people about this?