"Inmates in Calif. prison drinking contaminated water; State has no plan, funding to reduce high arsenic level" by Michael Rothfeld, Los Angeles Times | January 3, 2009
DELANO, Calif. - Beside a field of tumbleweed in this remote Central Valley town, California opened its newest prison in 2005 with a modern design, innovative security features, and a big environmental problem.
Drinking water from two wells at Kern Valley State Prison contained arsenic, a known cause of cancer, in amounts far higher than a federal safety standard soon to take effect.
Yet, nearly three years after missing the government's deadline to reduce the arsenic levels, the state has no concrete plans or funding to meet it. Officials spent $629,000 to design a filtration system and then decided not to build it, while neglecting to inform staff and inmates that they were consuming contaminated water....
Most correctional officers at Kern Valley State Prison take bottled water to work.... long-term exposure to arsenic, common in Central Valley communities, has been linked to cancer of the lungs, skin, kidneys, liver, and bladder and to other maladies.
Critics say the situation is emblematic of the short-sighted planning and creeping pace of the prison bureaucracy as it struggles to house 170,000 inmates.
The state has placed many of its prisons in isolated areas, where they are embraced by communities desperate for jobs and commerce. But officials sometimes have ignored health threats in such regions.
The MILITARISTIC POLICE STATE in all its GLORY!
Between 1987 and 1994, the state built four prisons in a part of the Central Valley known as a hotbed of valley fever, a sometimes severe infection that usually affects the lungs. Health researchers estimate that the state has spent millions to treat inmates with the disease....
Those are YOUR TAX DOLLARS for EVERYTHING, folks!!! The poisoning, the prisons, the health care.... all of it coming out of your pocket!
Now for the state's WEAK EXCUSES!
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Correctional officials said they could not explain why a filtration system was not included in the prison's design because most of the employees who worked on it had since left. Later, the agency developed plans to add a filtration plant. It obtained $2.5 million from lawmakers for that purpose in 2006.
But planners abandoned the idea, electing instead to incorporate the project into an overall prison expansion approved by lawmakers. Flaws in the legislation have postponed the expansion indefinitely. State project manager Gary Lewis said the filtration plant is still in the study phase....
Yeah, the STATE DOESN'T GIVE a SHIT if you drink tainted water!
Just look at the crap they are telling the people of Tennessee!! And the 9/11 heroes who dug through that toxic mess of Ground Zero? Didn't the government say the air was fine?
Yup, but the government is there to PROTECT YOU from "terrorists" and all sorts of harm, right? I guess that's why they LIED US INTO WARS and LIED us into a LOOTING of a "BAILOUT," huh?
The prison's chief medical officer, Dr. Sherry Lopez, said there was no immediate danger from the its water, based on an e-mail she received in April from a poison-control specialist who said arsenic is "much more a regulatory problem than a public health problem."
She's a DOCTOR, huh?
Yeah, let's just ADJUST the REGULATIONS and EVERYTHING is FINE!!!
Un-effin'-believable!
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That last paragraph (as well as my other posts of the day) sums up why I no longer believe government or their lying mouthpieces called newspapers.
