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Small Community Beats PCE Contamination
Author(s) -
Howell Mary
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
opflow
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1551-8701
pISSN - 0149-8029
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8701.1994.tb01211.x
Subject(s) - nightmare , contamination , rural community , water contamination , environmental science , pollution , environmental planning , environmental protection , socioeconomics , ecology , sociology , psychology , biology , psychotherapist
To many of us, life in a rural community means a healthy, pollution‐free environment‐‐clean streets, fresh air, and safe drinking water. Thoughts of chemical contamination seem out of place in such pleasant surroundings. But the flowered meadows and rippling creeks, which attract so many retirees and big‐city dropouts, may hide an environmental nightmare. The truth is communities of all sizes‐‐and the water systems that serve them‐‐are vulnerable to contamination. This article happens to focus on one small rural system located near Centralia, Washington, and what happened when they found extremely high levels of tetrachloroethylene (PCE) in their drinking water.