Faced with a looming crackdown on federal rules to sharply limit radium in drinking water, more than 100 water systems in Illinois are scrambling to dig new wells, install expensive treatment systems or buy water from neighboring towns.
Deep wells in northeast Illinois tap a geological hot spot for radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element that federal authorities say is linked to cancer and poses a greater risk to children than adults.
In Illinois, which reports more yearly radium violations than any other state, some local officials have considered the federal safety standards too stringent and ignored or loosely enforced them. But even staunch opponents of the regulations, facing the prospect of fines up to $50,000 plus $10,000 per day, are giving up the fight as a Dec. 8 compliance deadline approaches.
“The City Council is really skeptical about the standard,” said Bill McGrath, city administrator in Batavia, which joined a federal lawsuit that unsuccessfully sought to block enforcement of the radium rules. “But it’s a mandate, and we’ll comply with it.”
Radium laces drinking water in mobile home parks, such cities as Joliet and upscale subdivisions such as the gated community of Royal Melbourne near Long Grove.
Batavia, Elburn, Oswego and West Chicago, among others, routinely post radium levels at three to five times the legal limit, state records show.
Chicago and other communities that use Lake Michigan water have no problem with radium. Neither do most homes drawing from shallow wells.
Under a U.S. EPA regulation issued in 2000, water systems nationwide, including more than 100 in Illinois serving 450,000 people, were given until December to reduce excessive radium levels. The order, along with a federal appeals court ruling, gave teeth to a legal standard put on the books in 1976.
About 50 systems in the state are expected to blow the deadline but will be allowed to negotiate timetables, officials said.
Compliance can be pricey. Batavia officials expect water rates to at least double as the city prepares to build a treatment plant, new wells and water mains to reduce radium. Joliet approved a plan last month to spend $38 million for a dozen filtration plants to pull radium from 21 wells that pump water to 118,000 residents.
By the end of 2004, West Chicago plans to put on line a $30 million treatment system. In the five-year span ending next year, the project will have tripled water rates, officials said. At the 125-home Royal Melbourne subdivision, Lake County homeowners must buy $1,600 water-softening units to remove radium.
Communities that pump water from wells 800 to 1,500 feet deep draw from high-radium sources in northeastern Illinois such as the Mt. Simon and Cambrian-Ordovician aquifers. There, uranium and other radioactive elements decay into radium that leaches into the water.
Although local officials have downplayed the risk posed by radium, critics say the crackdown is long overdue. They argue that federal and state environmental officials have failed to protect consumers.
A child under age 5 exposed to radium-containing water has 10 times the lifetime risk of developing cancer as someone exposed to the same amount of radium at age 25, according to an April 21, 2000, U.S. EPA document.
“Illinois officials have known for more than a quarter of a century that they have serious radium problems,” said Erik Olson, who heads a safe-drinking water program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. “The losers in this process have been the children and others exposed to radium for so many years.”
The additional lifetime risk of cancer associated with drinking water that contains the maximum allowed amount of radium is one in 5,000, according to EPA calculations. When ingested, radium behaves like calcium and lodges in bones, especially the growing bones of children, according to U.S. EPA documents.
Over a lifetime, the radium lodged in bone tissue decays into other elements that bombard cells with gamma or alpha particles that can cause cancer, the documents say. Radium exposure has been linked to bone and sinus cancer, among other ailments.
Bryce Pinnow, 48, of Oswego, stopped drinking the local water long ago.
Both his parents, lifelong Oswego residents, died of bone cancer. Although science cannot determine what caused the cancers, Pinnow said he suspects the water because neither parent smoked or had family histories of cancer.
“My dad would drink literally a gallon a day,” said Pinnow, a construction worker.
State officials say federal radium regulations were loosely enforced because a relaxation of standards to allow eight times as much radium in drinking water had been discussed since the 1980s.
That relaxed standard was never adopted by the federal government, but in 1985 it became a key benchmark for the Illinois Pollution Control Board. Only systems with radium above the relaxed standard were blocked from adding new customers or building new water lines.
The board ruled that its standard would cause “minimal risk” to health. Forcing communities to adhere to tougher radium standards, it said, would put them at a “competitive disadvantage in attracting new development.”
In 1991, U.S. EPA officials formally announced they were considering easing radium rules on the theory that it might save more lives to focus on radon, a still unregulated source of radiation in air and water.
But in 2000, the EPA reversed itself and said its earlier radium analysis underestimated health risks. Out of 333 federal radium violations recorded from 1992 to 1999, Illinois accounted for nearly half, more violations than the next five states combined, according to the U.S. EPA.
Water systems that failed to meet safety standards were required to notify consumers. Such notices caused little public outcry–except in De Kalb.
There, a citizens group held meetings, pored over technical documents, interviewed experts and filed suit in federal court in 1996 seeking to enforce the radium rule. Within a year, the city settled and agreed to spend more than $12 million to meet the standard.
“You can line up an equal number of scientists that will say radium isn’t a problem as those who say it is,” said Dennis Duffield, director of public works and utilities in Joliet. But “we’ve lost that debate. The regulations are in.
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Local water systems exceed federal radiation levels
Water systems nationwide have until Dec. 8 to comply with federal rules regarding radiation levels in tap water. Dozens of systems in northeastern Illinois currently violate these standards. Water systems are allowed a maximum level of 5 picocuries per liter for radium, which has been linked to cancer.
TOTAL USERS AFFECTED
By county
McHenry: 0
Will: 163,081
Lake: 22,343
Kendall: 22,606
Kane: 35,124 Chicago
Cook: 42,553
DuPage: 16,630
WATER SYSTEMS EXCEEDING FEDERAL RADIATION LEVELS
By largest population served
%% WATER SYSTEM POPULATION RADIUM AMOUNT OVER
LEVEL* LIMIT
Joliet 106,221 19.1 14.1
Bartlett 36,800 8.4 3.4
Romeoville 33,331 9.5 4.5
Batavia 23,200 21 16
Lake Zurich 17,591 6.8 1.8
West Chicago 16,630 15.6 10.6
Oswego 16,320 17.8 12.8
Plainfield 11,500 9.5 4.5
Yorkville 6,189 14.9 9.9
Channahon 5,094 7.5 2.5
Sugar Grove 4,901 7.9 2.9
Statesville Correctional Center 2,850 11.7 6.7
Prospect Heights 2,400 7.4 2.4
Elburn 2,236 24.5 19.5
%% *Level in picocuries per liter. A picocurie represents the radioactivity in one trillionth of a gram of radium.
Note: Readings as of July 14. Only water systems with more than 2,000 users listed.
Source: Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
Chicago Tribune
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