EPA implies coal-ash-tainted river water safe to drink occasionally

A “very high” concentration of cancer-causing arsenic has been found in a water sample taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the site of the Tennessee coal ash spill, the Knoxville News Sentinel is reporting.

But the EPA’s Region 4 office, which covers Tennessee, apparently doesn’t know what its officials had told the Knoxville News Sentinel.  An EPA Region 4 press release issued on the same day said that just one of many river water samples showed “an elevated level of arsenic,” and that other heavy metals were found at concentrations slightly above drinking water standards.  The release goes on to say that “arsenic has been found to be naturally occurring in the environment and further investigation is in progress.”

Is the EPA really trying to suggest that those mountains of coal sludge fanning out over a territory larger than the National Mall in Washington are unlikely to be the source of elevated concentrations of heavy metals in the water?  

The EPA clearly was trying to calm public fears. But then, in this singularly astonishing statement, the agency invited public dismissal of everything it will subsequently say about the disaster: “Unless people regularly drink untreated river water, the arsenic should not cause any adverse health effects.”

Okay, I get it, you have to drink the tainted water regularly to be harmed by the arsenic. (And I feel so much better now.) But did the author of the press release really mean to imply, even inadvertently, that you’d be perfectly fine as long as you drank this stuff only occasionally?: 

If the EPA wants the public to trust what it says, it should stick to the facts rather than trying to manage public emotions. Moreover, prudence might dictate avoiding any suggestion that even occasional consumption of arsenic-tainted river water would be okay, and issue a reasonable warning to people to avoid contact with material that may well turn out in further testing to be hazardous.