"Drinking Problems: A Kansas Town Confronts A Tap-Water Crisis"

"The friendly waitress at the Pretty Prairie Steak House delivers tumblers of tap water as soon as diners take their seats. Across Main Street, the Wagon Wheel Café offers the same courtesy. Customers may also order coffee or iced tea, but it all starts at the same tap, and everyone is fine with that. This blasé attitude about drinking water surprised me: everyone in this little farm town in Reno County, Kansas, knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the liquid flowing from the municipal water tower was highly contaminated with nitrate, a chemical compound derived from fertilizer and connected to thyroid problems and various cancers. At the time I visited Pretty Prairie, last fall, nitrate levels there were more than double the federal standard for safe drinking water.

When the Kansas Department of Health and Environment first notified Pretty Prairie that its water was out of compliance, twenty-nine years ago, the town collectively shrugged. After all, the water tasted and smelled normal. (Nitrate has no flavor or odor.) No one I spoke to had noticed abnormally high cancer rates, nor had anyone seen a case of blue baby syndrome, a nitrate-linked disease in which infants’ blood does not supply enough oxygen to their bodies. “A lot of us grew up drinking this water,” Mike Seyb, the mayor, told me, “and we’re healthy.”  "

Elizabeth Royte reports for the May 2018 issue of Harpers.

SEE ALSO:

"Polluted Runoff: A Broken Promise Threatens Drinking Water in the Heartland" (Environmental Working Group)

"The GOP House’s Farm Bill Would Gut a Key Conservation Program" (Mother Jones)

"Will The New Farm Bill Be Terrible For Conservation? 6 Things To Know" (Oregon Public Broadcasting)

"Study Shows No Drop In Pollutants Feeding Lake Erie Algae" (AP)

"Rep. Kind Calls On Congress To Protect Conservation Programs In Farm Bill" (Wisconsin State Farmer)

"Criticism of House GOP Farm Bill Grows" (American Agriculturalist)

"Keep CSP, Ag Groups Urge - House Ag Proposal Raises Concern" (AgWeek)