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November 13, 2001

Tainted Water Worries R.I. Town

By MICHAEL MELLO, Associated Press Writer

BURRILLVILLE, R.I. (AP) - Bob and Linda Monahan have pulled $5,000 out of their children's college fund to drill their own well. Until that's finished, they pump water from a nearby lake to fill their hot tub rather than use the water supply in the town's Pascoag section.

Restaurants have posted signs promising customers they don't use the town water. Pascoag residents complain of rashes and nausea, and some have even temporarily left town.

Since Labor Day weekend, some 4,000 residents of the rural Pascoag section have been warned not to drink or cook with the water that comes out of their faucets because of pollution by a gasoline additive - intended to fight air pollution - that also has tainted water elsewhere around the nation.

One recent study commissioned by the federal government estimated it will cost at least $29 billion to remove MTBE - methyl tertiary butyl ether, a suspected carcinogen - from soil and water from California to New England.

Cities such as Santa Monica, Calif., and Dallas have lawsuits pending over MTBE contamination. California Gov. Gray Davis (news - web sites) has ordered MTBE be phased out of gasoline starting in 2003.

Most MTBE spills or leaks are small and isolated, says environmental lawyer Marc Bern of New York.

``In New York there are 4,000 new toxic spills every three months, at least 40 percent include MTBE,'' said Bern, whose firm has three state MTBE lawsuits pending.

But he says the Pascoag case, which state officials believe stems from a fuel leak at a now-closed service station, is one of the worst he's seen.

``You have an entire town affected, including homes and businesses,'' he said. He cautions residents who want to sue that it would be a costly, lengthy fight.

MTBE is added to gasoline to make it burn cleaner and cut air pollution.

At the same time, however, it pollutes groundwater far more readily than gasoline alone.

A mere gallon of gasoline containing MTBE can foul an entire community's water supply. In one of the country's worst cases, the scenic California mountain town of Glennville, population 300, was devastated by a leak from a single underground tank. Water had to be trucked in.

In Burrillville's Pascoag section, new wells may make clean public water available in January. Until then, residents must find water where they can to supplement the daily half-gallon-per-person ration supplied by the state.

The state also is spending $176,000 on a filter system to reduce the level of MTBE coming from the water district's wells.

The actions came after Pascoag residents noticed for weeks that their water had a foul smell and taste.

The smell was like ``the odor you'd get from the back of a pickup truck,'' said George Reilly, a retired state auditor who took his complaints all the way to the state health department.

Nationally, at least 45,000 private wells and 500 public wells are polluted by the chemical, estimates Komex H2O Science, a California environmental consulting firm that performed a study for Santa Monica and several other cities considering suing oil companies over MTBE contamination.

Santa Monica, a city of 90,000, shut down most of its wells in 1996 because of MTBE.

The wells are still closed, but unlike towns such as Glennville and Burrillville, Santa Monica has been able to tap a regional water supply to satisfy its needs.

``Initially we figured we'd solve this cleanup and get wells on line within a reasonable time,'' said Craig Perkins, Santa Monica's public works director. ``The more investigation we did, the more we realized it would be much more complicated.''

The city filed a lawsuit last year against 18 companies, and estimates cleanup costs at $300 million.

In Dallas, rising cleanup costs associated with a 500,000-gallon, MTBE-tainted gasoline spill in March 2000 led the city to file suit against owners of a ruptured pipeline. A trial is set for October 2002.

Residents of Pascoag, in Rhode Island's northwest corner, worry that property values and business will suffer if the contamination of their water lingers.

``Nothing can be bought or sold,'' attorney Brian Cunha said of local property. ``Imagine a town without value.''

Burrillville Town Manager Michael Wood disagrees.

``There's been a lot of propaganda, the idea that this will become a ghost town is just wrong,'' Wood said. ``If they get a (cleanup) plan in place, that will take care of the problem.''

 

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