"Superman Is Not Coming": Erin Brockovich on the Future of Water

Erin Brockovich speaks at the 2016 Arizona Ultimate Women’s Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center. Phoenix, Arizona, October 9, 2016. Photo: Gage Skidmore

Come take a ride on America’s toxic water slide: First stop: Flint, Michigan, where two years later, people are still contending with lead-laced water, which was finally detected by the EPA in February 2015 with the help of resident Lee Anne Walters.

Next stop: California, where hundreds of wells have been contaminated with 1,2,3-TCP, a Big Oil-manufactured chemical present in pesticides.

Travel to the East to see the significant amounts of 1,4-dioxane, an industry solvent stabilizer that continue to pollute the waters belonging to North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Basin. In New York and Pennsylvania, residents are contending with outbreaks of waterborne Legionnaires’ disease (the bacteria grow easily in water distribution systems and often hide in the biofilm of aging pipes).

Meanwhile, in June 2016, kids in Hoosick Falls, New York, protested in the streets with placards around their necks that featured PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid, a man-made chemical used in Teflon) levels to denote how much has infiltrated their blood through tainted water.

Drop to Houston, Texas, where high levels of […]

Full article: “Superman Is Not Coming”: Erin Brockovich on the Future of Water