Since 2008, more than 7,000 oil and gas wells have been sunk into the brittle, sedimentary rock. Another 5,500 have been approved by state regulators, making the Eagle Ford one of the most active drilling sites in America.
“…the federal government requires only about 10% of the nation’s schools and a tiny fraction of day cares — the 8,225 facilities that run their own water systems — to test for lead at all.
The EPA estimates that about 90,000 public schools and half a million child-care facilities are not regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act because they depend on water sources such as municipal utilities expected to test their own water. That means parents have no assurance lead isn’t seeping into children’s water from a school building’s pipes, solder or fixtures.”
“The California drought has grabbed America’s attention, but our water problems — and the coming scarcity — stem from a lot more than a few years of diminished rain and snow. The U.S. government’s National Intelligence Council predicts that, in less than 10 years, many large countries will be at risk of “state failure,” directly due to the global water crisis.”
“For the past two years, the 100,000 residents of Flint, Michigan, drank, cooked and bathed with lead-contaminated water. Rates of lead poisoning—which can impair brain development and cause other serious health ailments—among the area’s children have skyrocketed, from 5 percent before the water turned bad to 16 percent today.”