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A Call to Action

The argument that said “pesticides will not pollute underground drinking water sources” was prevalent among the manufacturers and users of weed-killers and insecticides and also among some environmental regulators and water quality experts.

Unless commonly used pesticides were spilled or used illegally, the theory went, they would vaporize, adhere to soil particles or undergo chemical transformation long before they would move to a subsurface zone saturated with the water that feeds public and private drinking water wells. That was the wishful theory espoused by pesticide manufacturers and some others long after Rachel Carson penned her famous indictment of modern pesticide usage.  

But this view of pesticides in groundwater was wrong. The normal and legal use of pesticides can and has led to pollution of groundwater, including water used for drinking.

Since 1979 when the insecticide aldicarb began showing up in drinking water supplies in Long Island, New York, evidence has been mounting that pesticide use poses real threats to groundwater quality.  As the body of evidence implicating a number of widely used pesticides in groundwater contamination has grown, the wheels of regulatory control have turned ever so slowly. Like the unfolding of the plot for a daytime soap opera, the response from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been painfully slow and halting.  

In the last decade and a half, EPA has stepped up its testing for pesticides, issued drinking water standards for additional pesticides, and identified those pesticides most likely to pollute groundwater.  EPA has initiated “special reviews” of those pesticides that have turned up most frequently in the nation's water supplies, and under the glare of regulatory scrutiny, pesticide manufacturers have offered changes in pesticide application rates.  One manufacturer of a groundwater-contaminating pesticide has even agreed to a voluntary phase-out of its troublesome product.  EPA issued its Pesticides and Ground-Water Strategy in October 1991, and the Strategy called on the states to step up their efforts to manage pesticide usage to reduce groundwater contamination.

But the outcomes of special reviews initiated years ago have yet to be decided, and the rules governing the critical implementation components of the 1991 Ground-Water Strategy — state groundwater management plans — have not been finalized as of this writing.

Clearly, science has shown that the legal use of pesticides is contaminating groundwater, and common sense tells us all that we don't want to be downing weed killers and insecticides in the water we drink to stay healthy.  But the power of the status quo is strong indeed.   

The government actions taken to date — as welcome as they have been — have been focused primarily on activities to better characterize and describe the problem of pesticide contamination of groundwater, not to stem it. Today it appears unlikely that the federal government or state governments, for that matter, will take aggressive action to address the contamination of groundwater by pesticides — absent community pressures.

And that is what this booklet is about — creating pressure and taking action to protect valuable groundwater resources.  The aim of this guide is to inform and engage a diverse cross-section of American society in the work of protecting groundwater.

You don't have to be a hydrologist or an engineer to make a contribution to groundwater protection efforts.  And you don't have to be a toxicologist or a medical doctor to be involved in a public discourse on the benefits and the risks of heavy pesticide reliance.  If you care about having clean water for yourself and your family, you can and should have a say in the pesticide management efforts of the regulatory agencies.

These materials are intended to help novices as well as seasoned activists take part in state or tribal deliberations on pesticide management.  The information provided is arranged in a way that allows easy entry into pesticide and groundwater basics, information about the state of our knowledge on pesticides in groundwater and a layperson's summary of EPA's proposed solutions, with suggestions for reviewing your own locale's actions or inaction. We also offer brief suggestions on how to affect the federal government's regulatory efforts. 

If you find it helpful, read the document straight through.  If you prefer, jump around from the table of contents to look up and review what you need at a given time.

Over time and as time allows, as new information on innovative approaches to pesticide management become available, data on the health and environmental effects of certain chemicals is updated, or changes in federal regulations occur, Friends of the Earth's Community Support Project will provide supplemental information on the FoE website.  We will also attempt to serve as a clearinghouse and disseminator of useful information from local activists around the country. We welcome calls, notes and e-mails with questions and suggestions on how to promote effective groundwater protection programs.

Our hope is to work with a growing numbers of partners — individuals and organizations  — to press state and tribal governments into action and to pressure the EPA to take decisive actions.  But if you can do just one thing for now to make a difference, look at the sample letter to find the address for EPA Administrator Carol Browner.  Write or email your own letter to her asking for action on this important issue.

Over the coming months, we hope to see EPA issuing final rules for state management plans for some troublesome pesticides, reviewing plan submissions critically to make sure they will be effective in protecting groundwater, acting decisively to withdraw pesticide registrations in states that do not take their groundwater protection obligation seriously, and actively promoting agricultural and home pest control strategies that rely less on groundwater-polluting chemicals.  

In addition, in the summer of 2000 EPA is expected to release an unprecedented assessment of total risks for one major family of pesticides.  This first-time combined risk assessment, by law, must address the exposures that people have through drinking water as well as food, air and other sources.  For some chemicals a careful and full consideration of drinking water contamination could be the first step toward new restrictions that better protect the public. 

Friends of the Earth believes that these types of actions are the logical outcomes of where the evolving knowledge of pesticide contamination would lead, were it not for the strongly entrenched economic interests in the current methods of pest control.  But it is clear that we will get there only if those who stand to be affected — groundwater users — become involved.

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