I like where I live, but I didn’t quite realize that it was turning into a green hell. At least not until I read Steven Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.
I live in one of the older neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. For the last decade or so, lead poisoning through the drinking water has been a constant source of concern. Most of the houses are over 100 years old, and the original lead pipes in many places are still being replaced. Obviously, low-income people who don’t have the money to replace their pipes are disproportionately affected by the problem, as are children, who are more likely to feel the effects of lead poisoning and suffer developmental problems as a result.
Of course, the lead pipes have been in these houses for a long time and were always a public-health threat. But the problem of lead poisoning in Washington, D.C. has actually gotten worse in recent years.
Despite the fact that chlorinating drinking water is one of the greatest public-health advances in history (know anyone who’s had typhoid lately?), environmental groups have been agitating against chlorine for over 30 years. They allege that chlorinated drinking water is linked to cancer and other environmental problems, despite the fact that American drinking water has been chlorinated for over a century without producing any significant evidence of cancer causation.
Bowing to pressure from environmentalists who think chlorine causes cancer, the Army Corps of Engineers removed chlorine from D.C.’s drinking water and replaced it with chloramine — a combination of chlorine and ammonia that is said to be less harmful. Choramine is, however, considerably more corrosive to pipes. As a result, the lead levels in city water — already a problem — became much worse.
And yet, according to Milloy, in reporting on the worrying lead levels in the city’s children at the beginning of this year, the
Washington Post explained the city’s lead problem with only an oblique mention of “a new chemical” in the city’s water supply. The article did not delve into the fact that the “hundreds of young children in [Washington, D.C.] experienced potentially damaging levels of lead in their blood” in large part due to ill-considered attempts at environmentalism.
But now that misbegotten environmentalism has ruined my tap water, the question is, how would the modern environmental movement go about fixing the nation’s water supply?
In order to paint a picture of what Milloy’s green hell looks like, water is a pretty good starting point. We’ve already established that environmentalists don’t want anyone drinking chlorinated water. So what does constitute good drinking water? Milloy notes that when the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the country’s leading environmental organizations, rated the drinking water of 19 major cities, only Seattle was rated as “excellent.” When Milloy looks at the NRDC’s rating criteria, he finds that the major determining factor between the Seattle and the rest had nothing to do with the content of the actual water. Rather, the NRDC would not rate a city excellent without looking at its economic-growth policies, under the reasoning that more development automatically meant more water contamination, regardless of what tests showed was in the water. About the only way to score well on the NRDC water evaluation was a “near-complete ban on agricultural and industrial operations,” according to Milloy.
So assuming your municipality uses chlorinated water and local politicians aren’t actively trying to destroy all the jobs in the area, what are you supposed to drink? Bottled water?
Au contraire. The production of bottled water uses fossil fuels, as does transporting it. That contributes to global warming and that’s a big no-no. In fact, as Milloy notes, several cities are already passing laws at the behest of environmental activists curbing bottled-water sales, forcing citizens to resort to the tap water that often the same environmental groups are decrying as unsafe.
And forget about importing water from somewhere else. Nevada wanted to build a desalination plant in California to bring more water to its rapidly growing desert towns. Environmentalists did not like that one bit. Canada has 20 percent of the world’s freshwater supply and virtually no one living in much of its landmass — and yet environmentalists are actively opposed to importing water from up north. The idea of tapping the Great Lakes as a water source is also verboten. Even the few very restrictive laws allowing freshwater usage from the Great Lakes have caused environmental uproars.
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