Drinking Poblems
A Kansas town confronts a tap-water crisis
Royte, Elizabeth
http://harpers.org/archive/2018/05/drinking-problems/
Publisher: Harper's Magazine
Year Published: 2018
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX22998
A look at the health crisis in Pretty Prairie, Kansas, where Nitrate from farms has polluted the water supply for three decades. Elizabeth Royte takes a look at the town's history and social climate in order to understand why the problem was left for so long.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
The friendly waitress at the Pretty Prairie Steak House delivers tumblers of tap water as soon as diners take their seats. Across Main Street, the Wagon Wheel Cafe offers the same courtesy. Customers may also order coffee or iced tea, but it all starts at the same tap, and everyone is fine with that. This blase attitude about drinking water surprised me: everyone in this little farm town in Reno County, Kansas, knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the liquid flowing from the municipal water tower was highly contaminated with nitrate, a chemical compound derived from fertilizer and connected to thyroid problems and various cancers. At the time I visited Pretty Prairie, last fall, nitrate levels there were more than double the federal standard for safe drinking water.
