The worst water Colt Smith has seen in 14 years with Utah’s Division of Drinking Water was at a mobile home park, where residents had been drinking it for years before state officials discovered the contamination.
The well water carried cancer-causing arsenic as much as 10 times the federal limit. Smith had to put the rural park under a do-not-drink order that lasted nearly 10 years.
“The Health Department refers it to us like … ‘Why aren’t you guys regulating it?’ We had no idea it existed,” he said.
More than 50 years after the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed to ensure that Americans’ water is free from harmful bacteria, lead and other dangerous substances, millions of people living in mobile home parks can’t always count on those basic protections.
A review by The Associated Press found that nearly 70% of mobile home parks running their own water systems violated safe drinking water rules in the past five years, a higher rate than utilities that supply water for cities and towns, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. And the problems are likely even bigger because the EPA database doesn’t catch all parks.
Even where parks get water from an outside source — such as a city — the clean water coming in can become contaminated if it passes through problematic infrastructure before reaching residents’ taps. Because the EPA doesn’t generally require this water to be tested and regulated, the problems may go unseen.
Utah is one of the few states to step in with their own rules, according to an AP survey of state policies.
“If you look back at the history of the Safe Drinking Water Act, like in the ’70s when they were starting, it was, ‘Well, as long as the source … is protected, then by the time it gets to the tap, it’ll be fine.’ And that’s just not how it works,” Smith said.
In one Colorado mobile home park, raw sewage backed up into a bathtub. In a Michigan park, the taps often ran dry and the water resembled tea; in Iowa, it looked like coffee — scaring residents off drinking it and ruining laundry they could hardly afford to replace. In California, boxes of bottled water crowd a family’s kitchen over fears of arsenic.
Almost 17 million people in the U.S. live in mobile homes. Some are comfortable Sun Belt retirees. Many others have modest incomes and see mobile homes as a rare opportunity for home ownership.
To understand how water in the parks can be so troubled, it’s useful to remember that residents…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at ABC News: Health…