Issaquah’s drinking water earned a mention in a recent New York Times Magazine article, but the context has some residents worried.
On Jan. 6, the magazine published “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” on its website. It was a profile of environmental attorney Robert Bilott and his lawsuit against the American chemical company over the dumping of Teflon component and known carcinogenic perfluorooctanioic acid — also known as PFOA — into a stream near a West Virginian farm and other public waterways.
In its closing paragraphs, author Nathaniel Rich noted that The Environmental Working Group, in a release published in August 2015, had identified 94 water districts across the country that had found manufactured fluorochemicals in their water above a safe level of 0.001 parts per billion, as established by a 2015 recommendation from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Rich then identified four districts that had found particularly high concentrations of fluorochemicals; Issaquah was the first district mentioned.
The article was quickly shared among Talus-based users of NextDoor, a localized social networking service.
“I am concerned about the quality of our drinking water here in Issaquah,” Issaquah resident Lynne Gregg wrote the Reporter Monday. “… This chemical is proven to cause a variety of illnesses and cancers. What is the City [sic] doing to clean up our water?”
On Jan. 14, city communications staff published a response to the Times Magazine article, asserting that Issaquah’s drinking water met Environmental Protection Agency standards.
Meanwhile, the Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District — which partially serves Issaquah — rushed to assure customers that it was not the agency referred to by the Times Magazine article.
“The New York Times article does not apply to the district’s water supply, nor to any of our customers that live in Issaquah,” General Manager Jay Krauss said. “We continually test at levels dramatically better than the federal limits that are cited in the article, and will maintain that as a matter of responsibility to our customers.”
PFOA was only detected at one of Issaquah’s four wells — Well 4 in Gilman, according to city water quality reports — and was diluted by blending with the water from at least one other well by the time it reached the tap, an Issaquah spokesperson said.
“It’s important to note that 2015 testing of our blended water found no detection of PFOA … and less than half the level of PFOS set by the EPA as a ‘provisional health advisory value,’” spokesperson Autumn Monahan said.
PFOA was detected at a level of 0.0215 parts per billion at Well 4 in 2013, with readings of 0.0200 in 2014 and 0.0181 in 2015, according to city water quality reports. The EPA’s provisional health advisory standard for PFOA is 0.4 parts per billion.
PFOA was not detected in a 2015 at-the-tap test of Issaquah’s water, while PFOS — perfluorooctane sulfonate — was detected at slightly more than half the EPA provisional advisory level of 0.2 parts per billion.
The state Department of Health conducted the 2015 water testing in conjunction with city public works in order to ensure the water met the EPA’s provisional health advisory values, Monahan said.
Perfluorochemical water levels are not regulated by the federal government and the city of Issaquah conducts testing for them in participation with the EPA’s Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Program.
The city has hired experts from HDR and Golder Associates to weigh in on the city’s water system, Monahan said.
But Gregg said the Times Magazine article provided just one more worry for Talus residents after water utilities were rerouted in the wake of November’s Parcel 9 landslide.
“There’s been a lot of concern over water quality since the landslide,” she said. “Some neighbors are commenting on the cloudiness and taste of the water and believe the slide damaged some pipes.”
No pipes were broken by the Talus landslide, Monahan said.
