Officials in Pensacola resisted effort to clean radioactive water [View All]

[salin]

Officials in Pensacola resisted effort to clean radioactive water

Sun-Sentinel
Posted September 8 2003, 3:09 PM EDT

PENSACOLA -- Two former utility administrators resisted efforts to remove high levels of radium from drinking water while downplaying its links to bone and nasal cancer and keeping the public in the dark for more than four years, a newspaper reports.

About 10,000 people served by the Escambia County Utilities Authority in Pensacola and Gulf Breeze drank radioactive water more than twice the federal standard while administrators stalled removal efforts, the Pensacola News Journal disclosed in Monday editions.

The newspaper reviewed more than 50,000 pages of public documents showing that unsafe levels of radium 226 and 228 had been detected in 1996 but not removed until 2000.

That's when the state Department of Environmental Protection fined the utility for violating the federal standard and failing to notify the public. Even then, utility officials claimed customers faced no significant risk.


more: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-radioactivewater0908,0,2618407.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines


mmmmmmmmm........ water........ :(