Cross-posted from Article XI
Clean water is something that many of us take for granted. However, imagine for a minute that your drinking water comes from a source where toxics regularly find their way into. Moreover, imagine that those responsible for making sure your drinking water is safe for consumption have relinquished their duties for complex political reasons.
While many such examples exist throughout the U.S., there’s one particular example in VA around the Blacksburg area where a recent meeting called by the Environmental Advocates of the New River Valley met to discuss their options for confronting this issue.
The RAAP (Radford Arsenal) has been cited by the EPA for a number of environmental violations, violations which constitute a health risk to those drinking from water sources where RAAP toxics eventually make their way. Unfortunately, some of the toxics make their way into the New River via its estuaries and possibly into the drinking water of thousands of Roanoke residents.
To date, it doesn’t appear like much has been done to tackle the problem on the part of the EPA, the VA Department of Environmental Quality or any of VA’s relevant elected officials like Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner or Congressman Cantor.
The phrase, “if we settle for nothing now, we’ll settle for nothing later,” is as true for this issue as it is for any other. If we do not take action to clean up our state’s drinking water now, we might as well throw in the towel for the hope of healthier water systems throughout VA.
The time to take action is always in the here and now.
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