It’s OK to drink the water.

At least in Vermont, one may reasonably assume that the local wastewater treatment plant has been inspected within the last decade, that any violations (and there have been violations) have been corrected, and that in some cases the offending facility was fined.

As to all those folks whose water comes from their own wells, it’s probably clean, too. You never can tell about e-coli, of course, but they’re quite rare in deep wells. If you get your water from a spring, you’re running a bigger risk, but you probably knew that.

None of which means that there is no water pollution problem in Vermont, nor that there is no legitimate criticism about the way clean water laws are enforced here. Every now and then, state officials issue a “boil water” notice for a small water system where problems are discovered, and the lakes and rivers could provide far better habitat than they do for fish and other creatures.

But drinking water from the tap is not likely to make you sick.

A reassurance necessary (or at least advisable) after the water-protection world and a whole lot of other people were knocked off their feed last Sunday by a long, detailed, and disturbing account of the nation’s clean water situation by the New York Times.

Under the headline “Clean Water Laws Neglected, at a Cost,” the Times revealed some horrible examples of, for instance, West Virginia homeowners who can’t drink their own well-water because toxic coal-mine detritus has seeped into their wells. The story also recounted several cases of lax enforcement of clean water laws as officials “repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping,” often intimidated by powerful corporate polluters.

In addition to the information in the newspaper, the Times conducted an “extensive review of water pollution records,” compiling a ”national database of water pollution violations that is more comprehensive than those maintained by the states or the E.P.A.”

Comprehensive, but not necessarily accurate.

Click on that link, for instance, and under “select a state,” you will see that…..WHOA, Waitaminit!.

THEY FIXED IT.

Well, sort of.

They fixed some of it. But sneakily, without any kind of public disclosure in their corrections pages that they had fixed it.

And they only fixed some of it.

Let’s go back to the beginning here.

The story in the paper reported that Vermont has 171 waste-water treatment facilities, of which 76, or 45 percent, are “out of compliance.” The on-line information painted a bleaker picture. The first page listed 15 plants, not one of which had been inspected since 1982, and eight of which had not been inspected since the 1970s. Those 15 plants had a total of 97 violations, but not one of them had been penalized a single penny.

But the information was internally inconsistent. Clicking (then, not now) on the Burlington North End waste water treatment facility led to a page saying the plant was last inspected on November 9, 1978, but that there was an enforcement action on August 5, 2005.

Or take Newport, last inspected December 7, 1981. But an enforcement action March 27 2006.

Enforcement actions without inspections? Not likely

Here is the information saved as a document on Monday:

1–15 OF 206

	FACILITY NAME	CITY	LAST INSPECTED	VIOLATIONS	FINES
	Hartford W W T F	White River Junction	Jan. 29, 1981	12	$0
	Burlington North End W W T F	Burlington	Nov. 9, 1978	10	$0
	Newport W W T F	Newport	Dec. 7, 1981	9	$0
	Montpelier W W T F	Montpelier	Nov. 21, 1978	8	$0
	Stowe W W T F	Stowe	Oct. 12, 1982	8	$0
	Burlington Main STP	Burlington	Nov. 9, 1978	7	$0
	Barre W W T F	Barre	Nov. 9, 1978	6	$0
	Northfield Mtp	Northfield	Nov. 14, 1978	6	$0
	Springfield W W T F	Springfield	June 5, 1978	6	$0
	Burlington Riverside W W T F	Burlington	Nov. 9, 1978	5	$0
	Essex Junction Mtp	Essex Junction	May 11, 1989	5	$0
	Bennington STP	Bennington	May 8, 1980	4	$0
	St. Johnsbury W W T F	Saint Johnsvury	Sept. 14, 1977	4	$0
	Windsor W W T F	Windsor	June 5, 1978	4	$0
	Fair Haven W W T P	Fair Haven	May 21, 1980	3	$0

24 facilities could not be mapped but are included in this list.

Now here it is on line Thursday:

1–15 OF 206

	FACILITY NAME	CITY	LAST INSPECTED	VIOLATIONS	FINES
	Hartford W W T F	White River Junction	March 21, 2008	12	$0
	Burlington North End W W T F	Burlington	March 5, 2008	10	$0
	Newport W W T F	Newport	Aug. 22, 2007	9	$0
	Montpelier W W T F	Montpelier	March 26, 2008	8	$0
	Stowe W W T F	Stowe	Dec. 5, 2008	8	$0
	Burlington Main STP	Burlington	Dec. 12, 2007	7	$0
	Barre W W T F	Barre	March 11, 2008	6	$0
	Northfield Mtp	Northfield	Oct. 8, 2008	6	$0
	Springfield W W T F	Springfield	Oct. 31, 2007	6	$0
	Burlington Riverside W W T F	Burlington	Feb. 23, 2008	5	$0
	Essex Junction Mtp	Essex Junction	Sept. 19, 2008	5	$0
	Bennington STP	Bennington	March 1, 2008	4	$0
	St. Johnsbury W W T F	Saint Johnsvury	June 28, 2007	4	$0
	Windsor W W T F	Windsor	Jan. 4, 2008	4	$0
	Fair Haven W W T P	Fair Haven	Oct. 23, 2008	3	$0

All of a sudden those same 15 plants have been inspected within the last few years — Newport on August 22, 2007, Burlington North End March 5, 2008. (And St. J is spelled correctly).

Somebody at the Times must have agreed with Gary Kessler, the Director of the Compliance and Enforcement Division of Director of Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation, that “they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Kessler called the Times presentation, “a real disservice. It makes it look as if our inspectors haven’t left the building in decades.”

In response to complaints from officials in Vermont (and probably elsewhere) the Times has now corrected that misimpression. But its on-line data still report that no Vermont wastewater treatment plant has been fined for any violation in decades, which certainly does indicate lax enforcement.

Except it isn’t true. Kessler provided records showing thousands of dollars in assessments for “Supplemental Environmental Projects” levied against Vermont wastewater treatment plants. Burlington, for instance, has been assessed more than $58,000 in the last 13 years. Instead of going into the state’s coffers, though, the money was used for environmental improvements in the Lake Champlain Basin.

It’s possible that according to the Environmental Protection Agency, where the Times got much of its data, any assessment that does not go into the state’s General Fund is not classified as a “fine.” But that’s what most people would call it. The Internet is an extraordinarily useful tool. But a reporter can’t ask it, “just what do you mean by that?”

An extraordinarily useful question for a reporter to ask.

The New York Times (whose spokesperson did not reply to an email request for comment) is the best newspaper in the country (if not as good as it used to be, but neither are the others). It regularly serves the country well by telling people what they ought to know but what powerful forces would rather they not know. Last Sunday’s report on clean water, by reporter Charles Duhigg, was one of those stories – thorough, clear, well-documented, and mostly accurate.

Like most high-quality newspapers, the Times is trying to augment the information it provides in print with creative and innovative use of the Internet. In this case, it, uhhh, muddied the waters, as it has effectively acknowledged by changing the data available on line.

But it only corrected some of its mistakes, and it did so a bit surreptitiously. Let’s not get carried away here. The general public did not panic, and even the officials (at least in Vermont) were more annoyed than worried about public over-reaction.

But surreptitiously is not a good journalistic habit.

Tags: Gary Kessler, the New York Times

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 12:07 am and is filed under Energy & Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.