Reply #29: The whole Central Valley sits at the bottom of a pollution well. [View All]

[Xithras]

Our pollution is a mix of natural and man made problems, and aren't easily fixed. Some of the pollution, like the Uranium, comes from the fact that the entire valley is a giant alluvial plain for the Sierras that's been collecting radioactive granite for millions of years. We pull our water from wells deep in the granite sandstone below us, and it comes up with uranium levels that barely miss EPA exposure limits.

Then we have the mining pollution from the 1800's. Mercury and other nasty chemicals were used to separate the gold from the rock, and those chemicals have spent the last century migrating downslope into our water tables. On top of that, our perfectly flat terrain means that our water tables have no real current, so all of the chemicals that leached down into the soil during 80 years of "modern" petro-farming are still there.

The pollution is so bad that nearby Modesto has been forced to shut down nearly a quarter of its wells because they couldn't get the EPA to look the other way any longer. They're also having a big flap right now because some developer built a huge subdivision, and the well they sunk for it is just pumping mucky, massively polluted sludge...and none of the people who bought there are being allowed to move into their homes until the developer builds a new water treatment plant for the homes next year.

The water here is nasty, and very few people who can afford bottled water don't use it. Heck, my offices are 100% bottled water based because NOBODY here wants to drink the unfiltered stuff that comes out of the faucet.

It's funny though. Our local governments do their best to keep this stuff buried and out of the press because they're owned by the developers. The developers don't want this to be well known, because nobody is going to spend $450,000 on a new house if the tap water is going to kill their kids. They don't warn the people moving in here, so most of them drink the tap water for years before learning about what's really in their drinking glasses.