37 U.S. Cities with Water Contamination in 2020
List of U.S. Cities with Unresolved Water Problems in 2020
The following is a list of US cities with current water contamination issues. You will notice the prevalence of PFAS as the contaminant most often discussed. Mitigation of PFAS contaminated water will be one of the biggest obstacles to clean drinking water in the US.
Santa Clarita, CA
The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency filed a lawsuit against multiple companies over their roles in introducing PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) into the water supply in Santa Clarita,” according to a news release from the SCV Water.
Kokomo, IN
The Environmental Protection Agency is set to install six groundwater monitoring wells to investigate the contaminated water plume beneath much of Kokomo.
The water plume provides around 55,000 residents with drinking water, but it is contaminated with arsenic and vinyl chloride, a manufactured chemical used in the production of plastic products and packaging materials.
Brady, TX
Brady, Texas has radium levels that are nine times higher than the EPA limit. The tap water can be orange, brown, or even green in color.
“It has been associated with increases in bone cancer. So exposure to radium… even low levels, may increase the risk of cancer development,” said Alexis Temkin, toxicologist with the EWG.
Eaton Rapids, MI
Levels of PFAS contamination nearly eight times above the groundwater limit in Michigan has prompted an investigation into possible drinking water contamination around the former Eaton Rapids landfill.
The city of Eaton Rapids, the Michigan Department of the Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and the Barry-Eaton District Health Department are testing to see if contamination from the long-closed municipal landfill on Hogsback Road seeped into the drinking water of neighboring properties.
Martinsville, IN
Once known as the City of Mineral Water for the healing power of its spring-fed spas, Martinsville, Indiana, now faces the specter of health threats caused by the contamination of its water supply.
For the past 20 years, slow-moving groundwater plumes contaminated with potentially dangerous chemicals have seeped into the city’s municipal well field and drinking water plant. It is contaminated with tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, and trichloroethene, or TCE. Although the city added carbon filters 15 years ago to clean contaminants from the main plume, the problem is far from resolved.
North Smithfield, RI and Millville, MA
North Smithfield has an inordinate number of contaminated sites associated with industrial operations and dumping. A total of some 40 locations in town and in nearby Millville are considered as sources of water contamination. Several highly polluted sites have received the most scrutiny.
In 2004, the Rhode Island DEM discovered that three wells on Mechanic Street in North Smithfield contained excessive levels of PCE and TCE. Low levels of Freon 113 and other industrial solvents were also detected. DEM began providing bottled water to all residences along Mechanic Street whose TCE levels in their drinking water exceeded the maximum contaminant level.
In Massachusetts, three residences housing nine families living on Providence Street in Millville were impacted by a single plume that contained PCE, TCE, and chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs). DEP paid to install filtration systems at all three residences, and for a well that serves 19 condominiums.
Paden City, WV
Paden City, West Virginia, has an ongoing investigation into the city’s contaminated water supply.
The small community, located along the Ohio River in Tyler and Wetzel counties, has faced years of contaminated water from a chemical commonly used in dry cleaning called Tetrachloroethylene or PCE.
Dover, DE
Two more wells near a military base in Delaware have elevated levels of chemical contaminants, according to state environmental officials.
Delaware’s environmental protection department was recently notified by officials at Dover Air Force Base that the wells near the base may have levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, above federal advisory levels of 70 parts per trillion.
Woodbury, MN
Woodbury is taking emergency action to deal with contamination of its drinking water supply from so-called “forever chemicals.”
The southeast Twin Cities suburb will build a temporary treatment plant to remove the chemicals known as PFAS, to ensure it has enough clean water to meet summertime demand.
Sandy, UT
The reason potentially dangerous levels of fluoride were pumped into Sandy City drinking water is not what city leaders initially said.
Next week will mark one year since hundreds of homes, in several zones, were thought to be potentially contaminated when a pump failed, allowing fluoride to get into the drinking water for days before being detected.
Kewaunee County, WI
The most recent results from an ongoing, two-year study of private well water quality in three southwestern Wisconsin counties continue to show contamination from human and livestock waste and pathogens that in some cases can cause severe illness.
And if the study produces findings in line with a similar study in Kewaunee County from 2015 to 2017, new and better wells won’t be enough to produce safer drinking water, one of the study’s lead researchers said.
Pleasanton, CA
The city council signed off on a response plan with near- and long-term strategies to address levels of certain human-made chemicals found in the local groundwater supply.
The move came after new state testing requirements led the city and Zone 7 Water Agency officials to discover their wells contain levels of synthetic compounds in the PFAS family. The city-operated Well 8 has not operated due to contamination since testing started last summer — and this year, the city’s Well 5 was non operational because of a pump motor failure.
Middletown, OH
The village of Camden has filed a lawsuit against food processing giant Cargill Inc. and two other companies seeking to recover more than $3 million the municipality spent after it alleges salt from the businesses contaminated its drinking water.
In the lawsuit, filed in the Preble County Common Pleas Court in June, the village accused the companies of contaminating its well field and public water system. Salt runoff from those companies seeped into the ground water and contaminated the wells, the lawsuit alleges. The village first learned about the contamination in 2010, the suit says, and the cost to acquire a new well field caused residents’ water rates to more than double.
Fayetteville, NC
State Attorney General Josh Stein is having his office investigate the sources of “forever chemicals” pollution in North Carolina — substances like the PFAS and GenX chemicals discovered in recent years to have contaminated drinking water supplies in southeastern North Carolina.
Elevated levels of GenX have also been found in drinking water wells of homes, businesses and schools near the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works plant, which is in Bladen County at the southern Cumberland County line.
Manorville, NY
Frustrated residents of Manorville who fear that their well water is contaminated took aim at the Navy at a local meeting last week.
Dozens of residents packed the Manorville Fire Department headquarters meeting room Wednesday night for the Navy’s semiannual Restoration Advisory Board meeting, when the Navy reports on its progress cleaning up waste sites it still controls at the former Grumman property in Calverton.
Monitoring of the Navy property has disclosed the existence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 1,4 dioxane and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Orange County, CA
Nine Orange County water agencies have retained a legal team to study whether to file suit to recoup the $1 billion or more it could cost to purify drinking water in local wells contaminated with PFAS chemicals and to pay for more expensive imported water in the interim.
The PFAS compounds — long used in Scotchguard, Teflon and other products — have leached into groundwater supplies over several decades and have been linked to a variety of health problems, including cancer, liver and kidney damages and ulcerative colitis. It’s likely that 3M and DuPont, the primary manufacturers of PFAS products, would be defendants.
Long Island, NY
With the revelation that potentially harmful contaminants are being found in drinking water on the North Shore, residents have grown concerned about their exposure to these chemicals.
Long Islanders are asking what they can do to monitor and manage their exposure to contaminants that include perfluorinated compounds, or PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane. Although there is no direct treatment, there are ways to measure one’s PFAS levels. This can be useful to North Shore Water District residents, because the compounds found in the Glen Head well, known as PFOS, fall in the PFAS classification.
Merrimack, NH
Legislation approved this week by the New Hampshire House is a vital step in fighting the public health crisis caused by perfluorochemicals in local water supplies, according to Merrimack officials.
Nearly one year ago, New Hampshire implemented some of the most stringent standards for PFOA contamination in the nation — three years after PFOA was first discovered at high levels in the Merrimack region near Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics. However, some water districts throughout the state, along with 3M, sued the state arguing that the new limits were too tough, which allowed for the old standards to stay, at least temporarily.
Nekoosa, WI
Some private wells in central Wisconsin contain seven times as much of the standard level of harmful contaminants, but at least one expert says there are ways to combat the problem using solutions from northern Europe.
Infants and women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant are the most at risk, Dr. Sarah Yang, groundwater toxicologist for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services. In infants, the nitrates affect how the blood transport oxygen and can lead to what is known as blue baby syndrome, Yang said.
Martinsburg, WV
A lawsuit has been filed in connection with a chemical contamination of Martinsburg’s water supply linked to a substance used at the West Virginia Air National Guard base south of the city.
The civil action filed April 29 against 3M Co. and six other companies in U.S. District Court seeks damages for exposing Martinsburg-area residents to per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that apparently migrated from the national guard base at Shepherd Field into the city’s Big Springs well.
The substances were in aqueous film forming foam, a substance designed to extinguish oil-based fires.
Lakewood, WA
Lakewood Water District is suing the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, the Air Force and the Army, as well as 13 manufacturers, including 3M and DuPont, over firefighting foam used on Joint Base Lewis-McChord that leaked into the groundwater supply.
The district said it will spend over $377 million in the next 50 years for water-quality protection projects because the foam contains Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that have potentially adverse affects on people’s health and the environment.
Montgomery County, PA
The Air Force will spend more than $2 million to permanently stop PFAS-contaminated water from flowing off a former Montgomery County base into local waterways, officials said Friday.
The agreement to fund the fix comes after more than two years of requests from local residents and officials to address the PFAS contaminated water that has flowed off the former Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove and into local creeks.
Bemidji, MN
When Bemidji learned a few years ago that one of its drinking water wells was contaminated with the man-made chemicals known as PFAS, city officials swiftly shut it down.
Now, running on just two of its five wells, Bemidji has hired an environmental law specialist to explore legal options and is looking at building a $16.5 million treatment plant to get the harmful chemicals out of its water. How it will pay for that isn’t clear.
Oscoda, MI
The Air Force Civil Engineer Center announced it is awarding a contract in July that will expand capture zones to better control migration of PFAS contaminants from a former air force base in Oscoda following pushes from politicians.
The Air Force announced the contract Friday with plans to expand capture fields already in place at a former fire training site and the Central Treatment System located on the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base.
Chincoteague, VA
In 2017, when NASA found a toxic chemical was contaminating wells supplying the town of Chincoteague’s drinking water, the town’s rapid disconnection from the affected wells meant water flowing to the community was perfectly clean.
Now, however, a federal agency is investigating whether the practices that led to the contamination could have made Chincoteague water unsafe for decades prior to the discovery.
PFAS contamination is not mentioned in the town’s 2018 drinking water quality report, a document sent out annually by law to inform consumers about local water quality. The 2018 NASA Wallops report does mention detection of PFAS contamination at Wallops at a concentration below the EPA guidelines for exposure.
Poway, CA
The recent contamination of Poway’s water was caused in part by storm drain and reservoir connections that are not in compliance with state regulations, a state official told KPBS Wednesday.
The system was overwhelmed during last week’s rains and stormwater flowed into a reservoir of treated water that was then piped into homes and businesses, according to Sean Sterchi, the San Diego District Engineer for the state’s Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water.
Earlimart, CA
Residents in Earlimart, California, lost water service when a 50-year-old well on Mary Ann Avenue failed in late May.
When it came back on, the main source of drinking water for more than 8,000 residents became a well contaminated with a chemical from banned pesticides. And most residents didn’t know.
The entire town relies on five wells run by the Earlimart Public Utility District for its water. Three of those wells meet state and federal drinking water standards. Without the Mary Ann well, there wasn’t enough capacity to meet the town’s demand.
Bangor, MN
The Navy will test the drinking water of residents whose homes border Naval Base-Kitsap to determine whether there are dangerous levels of contamination from firefighting foam once used at Bangor.
If any homes in areas bordering the base are found to have what are commonly called PFAS in dangerous concentrations, they will receive bottled water indefinitely, “until a long-term solution is implemented,” the Navy told the Kitsap Sun.
Oakdale, MN
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has discovered that potentially harmful chemicals are still leaching into surface water from a former 3M waste disposal site in Oakdale, despite the company’s efforts to contain them, regulators told 3M in a letter last week.
The MPCA has given the Maplewood-based manufacturer 45 days to come up with a new plan to keep perfluoroalkyl substances — better known as PFAS — from contaminating nearby water sources, the letter said.
“This is a continuing evolution of what needs to be done at this site to address the contamination,” MPCA Assistant Commissioner Kirk Koudelka said. “The system there to capture and keep any contamination on site is not entirely working.”
Orleans, NY
Scientists researching salt contamination in well water in the town of Orleans are looking at another piece of the puzzle in evaluating whether road salt and a state-owned salt barn may be responsible.
Kathryn G. Lopez, a researcher who recently joined the project, found chemical ratios in Orleans well water that fell within the range for road salt contamination.
Widespread salt contamination has affected the wells of hundreds of residents in the town for several years. Many, including a few who found lead in their well water, have relied on bottled water for drinking and spent thousands of dollars replacing corroded appliances and utensils.
Sanford, NC
A water sample taken in September from the Sanford sewage treatment plant that discharges into Deep River uncovered “staggering” concentrations of forever chemicals, newly released documents from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality reveal.
The sample contained perfluorooctanesulfonic acid — or PFOS — measuring 1,000 parts per trillion. That is more than 14 times greater than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory of 70 parts per trillion for drinking water.
The data coming out of Sanford is just one example of the high levels of potentially carcinogenic chemicals that a new monitoring program has detected in rivers and streams throughout the Cape Fear River basin, from Reidsville to Wilmington.
Bethany, OK
The city of Bethany has filed a federal lawsuit against two companies that it says contaminated its water system decades ago.
The mayor of the city of Bethany, KP Westmoreland, said the companies involved learned harmful chemicals were polluting its water system in 2008 but said they didn’t notify the city until 2012.
“Areas of concern at this non-commercial airport site are the 26 underground storage tanks that contain various types of gasoline. Although several storage tanks have been removed, this site poses a potential threat to drinking water wells in the area, particularly several City of Bethany wells that lie within 0.5 to 2-mile radius and the Community of Silver Lake wells located within a 2 to 3-mile radius of the site,” the inspection report from the DEQ read.
Summerville, GA
Summerville officials are turning to the City of Rome for guidance in dealing with a recent water contamination advisory issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Residents of the Chattooga County community are being directed by the EPA to fill up containers of fresh water from a water truck at City Hall after the city’s Raccoon Creek treatment plant showed high numbers of perfluorinated compounds — toxic, man-made chemicals used to make carpet, clothing, cookware, paper and food packaging materials.
Andrews, IN
A public health emergency was declared in the small town of Andrews, Indiana. In June, Huntington County Emergency Management warned residents against drinking or using the town’s water. After town officials said record levels of cancer causing chemicals were found in the drinking water.
The maximum contaminate level (MCL) of vinyl chloride allowed in drinking water according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is .002 mg/L because it is a carcinogen. The Town of Andrews said there was “more than 10 times” that amount of vinyl chloride in one of their wells and that the carcinogen was found in all three of the town wells.
Newburgh, NY
n May 2016, toxic chemicals known as PFAS (per and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were found to have contaminated Newburgh’s primary drinking water reservoir, Lake Washington.
“We didn’t know what it was,” said Shantal Riley, a reporter at Vice. “There wasn’t much information out there.”
In January 2020, Vice published an article titled, “The New York Water Crisis That Nobody’s Talking About,” concerning the Newburgh water crisis. It compared Newburgh to Flint, Michigan, calling it an “old industrial city,” where water crises had been in limbo for years.
East and West Rockhill Townships, PA
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has identified Bergey’s Tires as a “potentially responsible party” for drinking water contamination in East and West Rockhill townships, according to a statement released by the DEP on Tuesday.
The investigation dates back nearly three years, after PADEP in 2016 discovered per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in a pair of drinking water wells that were owned by the North Penn Water Authority and served several hundred nearby residents. The wells were then shut down. Subsequent testing of more than 150 private drinking water wells in the area identified 14 that contained PFAS above a safety limit recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Indianapolis, IN
A family of synthetic chemicals, which for decades have been found in everything from food packaging to stain-resistant carpets and are associated with a list of health problems, have now been found in Indianapolis’ drinking water, a report says.
The long-lasting “forever chemicals” also known as PFAS showed up in Indianapolis tap water at a level of 15 parts per trillion, according to a study by the Environmental Working Group, a national research and advocacy organization.