US Urges Illinois City(Galesburg) To Give Customers Bottled Water

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Federal regulators are recommending that an Illinois city provide bottled water or filters to residents affected by high levels of lead in their drinking water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is also urging Galesburg, Illinois, to pay for additional lead testing for customers who request it and provide more public education about health risks. In addition, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the city to perform a corrosion control study to learn whether specific treatments might better prevent old pipes and plumbing from leaching lead into tap water.

The actions come in response to an investigation published this month by The Associated Press, which found that Galesburg had one of the nation's most persistent problems of lead in drinking water. An AP analysis of EPA data involving 75,000 water systems found that nearly 1,500 systems serving 3.3 million Americans have exceeded the lead cap of 15 parts per billion at least once in the past three years.

Galesburg's water has exceeded that level 22 times over the last 25 years, including in the most recent sampling period last fall. Knox County, which is home to Galesburg, has also long struggled with some of the highest rates of childhood lead poisoning in Illinois.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TAINTED_AT_THE_TAP_GALESBURG?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-04-26-18-44-31