 Communities all over the United States depend on an abundant and unpolluted supply of groundwater. For years, we have believed these underground supplies of water were safe, but dangerous levels of contaminants are showing up in more and more drinking water wells. We blame landfills, storage tanks, or surface spills, and completely overlook one source of pollution. This floor drain, which discharges contaminants to the ground and other shallow disposal systems like it, can wipe out an entire community's water supply. Most facilities which manufacture a product or provide a service use industrial chemicals and generate toxic waste water. And sometimes, they use a floor drain, a septic system, or a storm drain to get rid of chemical spills and process waste. The problem with shallow disposal systems is that they provide little or no treatment to products on the market today, which contain hazardous chemicals and heavy metals. In businesses like manufacturers, service stations, photo or print shops, poor industrial chemicals down the drain, the untreated contaminants percolate into the soil and may eventually reach saturated rock formations, or aquifers, which contain our drinking water supplies. Many aquifers also provide water to surface water supplies. This means that shallow disposal systems pose a threat to rivers, streams, and most of our natural lakes. Because this is a problem of national scale, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, so every state would have an underground injection control, or UIC program, to protect water supplies from shallow disposal systems and other kinds of injection wells. Yet almost a quarter of a century later, shallow disposal systems still endanger water resources. Why? Let's look at three communities in different parts of the country to see why legislation alone can't protect a water supply. For many years, residents and businesses in the suburban community of Great Falls, Virginia used both drinking water wells and septic systems without any concerns. Dr. Albert Lee and his wife Catherine chose Great Falls as a place to build their dream home. We wanted a safe place to raise our children, and we wanted a clean environment to raise them in. But after they moved in, laboratory tests on the Lee's well water detected high levels of toxic solvents. You would never know there was anything wrong with the water. I mean, it looks fine, tastes fine. Maybe if you're a little upset, in my readings of perchloroethylene, the substance is known to be a liver toxin and potentially carcinogenic. Concerned about their family's health, the Lee's are using bottled water until they are connected to a public water supply system. The solvents, which contain perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene, or PCE and TCE, have come from a septic system located in a shopping center within a quarter of a mile of the Lee's home. The shopping center and most of Great Falls are on top of a formation of fractured bedrock, which made it easy for the PCE and TCE to move into the drinking water supply. The local government alerted the community to the contamination. We conducted some sampling in early March of approximately 15 homes. We found some contamination in a number of the wells. EPA, which administers the UIC program for Virginia, took action and began monitoring nearby wells to determine if additional wells have been adversely impacted. So far, the water supply system of a swim club and the wells of five homes have levels of PCE and TCE, which exceed national drinking water standards. The local government and the shopping center have taken steps to protect citizens of Great Falls from further exposure to contamination. But there are 30,000 septic systems in the county around Great Falls. Commercial and industrial wastewater disposal continues to be a potential problem. Spaniola is a small town north of Santa Fe, New Mexico and is situated along the Rio Grande between two mountain ranges. The Santa Clara and San Juan Pueblos surround the town on three sides. When laboratory tests on the city's water wells show dangerous levels of PCE, the city called on the state for help. We found PCE in the groundwater around here and we've traced it back to this dry cleaner. At the source, it's at very high concentrations. The drinking water standard is five parts per billion. At the source, we found it in levels up to 100,000 parts per billion. It doesn't take very much contamination to pollute an aquifer. Dry cleaning solvents leaked from this sump and it acted like a shallow disposal system. Espaniola obtains its drinking water from two sand and gravel aquifers, separated by clay barriers. PCE percolated through the area surrounding the sump into one aquifer, then entered the second aquifer through breaks in the clay barriers. PCE continues to spread over a wide area in the top aquifer and has moved within a mile of the Rio Grande. The state has recently declared the area a super fun site and is working with the EPA to address the problem. The town identified 24 potential users of toxic chemicals within 1,000 feet of the affected wells. It really is significant that a small facility like this has created such a giant groundwater contamination problem. The cost can run into the millions of dollars, which mom and pop-owned operations like this certainly can't afford that kind of cleanup. We had to close two of our wells due to contamination. At today's costs, those wells would cost us close to half a million dollars to replace. We had to find alternate sources of water. The cost of new wells and groundwater cleanup threatened the city's ability to grow economically. The city cannot solve this problem by itself. It's really hard to tell where we failed, but perhaps the city could have enforced their ordinances much better than what we did in the past. I think we need to have more control over the growth in the area and have control over what types of businesses are established around our well-head protection areas. The well-head protection program is beginning to work. The purpose of this sign is to help educate the public on what well-head protection actually is. EPA, state and local governments are working to find a way to keep PCE and TCE from reaching the Rio Grande. In which the Pueblos depend. We've become so used to this way of life and the pristine nature of the river. It's very concerning that that could all change with chemical contamination. One of the major lessons that the city of Hispaniola learned, that it's cheaper to spend a few thousand dollars to prevent contamination, to do a study of the resources, a few million dollars to have to clean up. In Missoula, Montana, the story of groundwater contamination and shallow disposal systems has turned out differently. Welcome to Missoula. We're a town of about 60,000 people in the urban area. It's a town that's been very interested in its water resources and recently has been very active in protecting those resources. The city sits on top of the Missoula aquifer, its sole source of drinking water. The aquifer itself is roughly about 150 feet thick. It forms the valley bottom here of the Missoula valley and it's made up of mostly cobbles and gravels which tends to make it very vulnerable to contamination. Missoula became aware of how vulnerable the aquifer really was when dangerous chemicals showed up in the town's drinking water wells. Mountain water, Missoula's water utility contractor was forced to shut down three of its wells. EPA, which administers the UIC program in Montana, helped the Missoula Health Department identify shallow disposal systems as the cause of contamination. We wanted to make sure that we got essentially 100% of the businesses so we started with simple things like going through phone books and getting lists of different types of businesses such as automotive repair and trucking fleets, things like that. Then we went a step farther and actually took aerial photographs and used those and went out and did what we call windshield surveys and literally drove every street and every alley in Missoula and mapped out the locations of any potential businesses that might have them. The city identified over 300 potential users of toxic chemicals. Some businesses can certainly contaminate an aquifer. When we're looking at 300 businesses then we feel we have a really significant problem. The local government realized it had to mobilize all available resources in the community to solve the problem of shallow disposal systems. Local business became part of the solution instead of the problem. Business believes that if you have a clean environment that it's good for business. So the chamber got involved with a campaign that we call It's Good for Business where we recognize businesses around town for being environmentally conscious and we actually went out, interviewed them and picked awards and then put them on TV so that the rest of the community could know what these businesses were doing for the environment and for the aquifer. Business and municipal facilities which used toxic chemicals, sealed drains and converted to a dry shop or reduced or eliminated waste water by installing holding tanks or converted to environmentally safe disposal methods. There is a responsibility that we have as business people because of the water. We're told that Missoula's water here is unique to the situation we have and I believe it. Recycling has even become a profitable business. Because people have been aware of the water problem, our business has grown, more people are conscientious of recycling oil. Here's one of my trucks coming in, they've been doing a pickup with the dealerships at Missoula, it's got 2,000 gallons of used oil on it and he's going to pull up here to the pump station and unload. Government facilities had to correct the problem as well. Some engines leak oil and it was dripped on the floor and that oil got mixed with the water from washing the vehicles and that went into the drains. What we came up with was a holding tank program where by all of the floor drains were routed into a holding tank. Missoula also integrated commercial and industrial waste water disposal with its solid waste management program. In place of simply disposing of wash water or shop water in a floor drain now they usually catch it. They're either on sewer or they capture it in a tank and have the tank pumped. The city has been real cooperative in use of their drying beds at the wastewater plant for drying out those waste and the city hauls them up to us and the total cost of that has been pretty minimal compared to what I think people expected it to be in the first place. The city council enforced local ordinances to restrict land use over sensitive water supplies and extended the sewer into the business district. Part of the effort related to this area was to try to extend city sewer and that was recently done and that gave the businesses a viable long term solution to using these shallow disposal lines. The health department educated community leaders and institutions. We're looking at two models that I use frequently in my presentations for both kids and community groups. We find that having a visual for surface pollution and ground water pollution people understand it more and it's an invaluable tool for me. TV stations and newspapers got involved and Missoula gained the support of scores of volunteers to ensure the success of its prevention program. Today Missoula's groundwater meets EPA's drinking water standards and all city wells are back online and the entire community is committed to keeping them that way. Missoula has accomplished this without closing a single business or taking on serious financial burden. Once we had the need to protect the drinking water supply sold the rest of it was easy. It's never too soon or too late to protect your community's water supply. Local officials in Great Falls, Virginia, Española, New Mexico and Missoula, Montana learned that even with protective legislation in place they had not recognized the real threat of shallow disposal systems. Local leaders, politicians have to be thinking of the public good and the public good is clean water, clean air and if they fail to assess that, if they fail to remedy that then there's going to be problems in the future for them. Take steps today to protect your drinking water. The EPA Safe Drinking Water Act Hotline at 1-800-426-4791 for the name of the state and federal agencies that manage the Wellhead Protection Program and the Underground Injection Control Program in your state. You can also reach EPA at this internet address.