Florida Grand Jury on Water-Toxics Nondisclosure: It Oughta Be a Crime

A Florida grand jury May 4 blasted federal, state, and local utility authorities for failing to disclose and notify Pensacola-area residents of toxic contamination of their drinking water. While issuing a blistering condemnation of systematic malfeasance in failing to inform the public of environmental health threats, the grand jury stopped just short of issuing criminal indictments.

Coverage of the case by the Pensacola News Journal made clear that the case had much broader implications -- namely, that the Safe Drinking Water Act's disclosure requirements are inadequate for public protection, and are often unenforced by state authorities and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Moreover, the News Journal demonstrated that aggressive vigilance by the news media may be one of the most effective remedies for government's disclosure failures.

The grand jury found, according to a News Journal summary, that "Groundwater contamination in Escambia County is widespread, with more than half of the county's public supply wells contaminated with dry cleaning chemicals, pesticides or petroleum products." Radium was also found in the area's drinking water, and the Escambia County Utilities Authority also knew about, but failed to inform its customers of that contamination, as required by law. The problem goes back at least to the mid- and late-90s.

One reason for the lack of criminal indictments in the case was that the two local utility officials believed to be most responsible had left the agency. Another was that some of their decisions not to inform the public had been approved tacitly by the full ECUA board, and overlooked by Florida's Department of Environmental Protection and the EPA itself. Pensacola and Florida DEP officials denied that there was a problem.

The grand jury also found that utility officials were more concerned about public relations and financial impacts of their decisions than the health, safety, and welfare consequences. One of their recommendation was that dereliction of duty be water utility officials be criminalized.

The Florida story of failure to disclose and poor oversight echoed another recently in the news. The Washington Post has been reporting since December 2003 about D.C.-area utilities' (and their EPA overseers') failure to inform the public there about lead contamination of their drinking water.

-- "Grand Jury Blasts Agencies Over Tainted Water Supply," Pensacola News Journal, May 5, 2004, by Steve Mraz, Elizabeth Bluemink, and Scott Streater.