NYTimes: One reporter, huge Toxic Waters project, Part 6 : Legal water not always clean or safe
NYTimes‘s Charles Duhigg, winner a few years ago of a George Polk, a Deadline, a Heywood Broun, and a bunch of other awards for a series on exploitation of the elderly, rolls out today the sixth installment in a Toxic Waters project (whole series including today’s) that, after a read-thorough, staggers one for its size, clarity, organization, and punch.
In a post in September on another segment in the water project, The Tracker shared uncertainty that the piece found the sweet spot where judicious alarm, enterprising investigative reporting, and clear caution against undue fright overlap. I thought some of that one’s reporting sat on the sensational side. Today’s segment, however, seems to hit the ball perfectly, and shifts my perspective on the overall project too.
His topic this week is the vast amount of US tap water that, while legal under EPA standards, may be dangerous. The piece is huge and has lots of extra material on line. It jumps from an above-the-fold front to a densely packed double truck inside. It ranges through examples from many places, but something like a singular hero emerges: the man in charge of drinking water in Los Angeles. He is battling budget cutters, furious industries, skeptical residents, tax-abhorrers, and others to try to reduce levels of selected pollutants even more. This is even though the city’s water already meets (outdated, he says) EPA clean water standards. The anti-photochemistry plastic balls episode (visible with the story’s main protagonist in the pic as a lesson in crystallography and packing) is brilliantly executed. The series, with extra resources on line including lists of the scientific literature alluded to in the mainbar, has previously raised flags over ag waste, overloaded sewage plants, Clean Water Act and related enforcement failures, and more.
This, all in all, appears to be stupendously competent reporting. Maybe scarier than needed. But today’s is so full of caveats and explorations of the uncertainties and nuances of determining what is dangerous and is not, yet also so emphatic in explaining why there is reason to worry (and spend a lot of money cleaning up water that is, for now, legal), that I have to salute it balance of toughness and caution. One hopes that at a few topflight university-level schools of public health, grad students dive into these things, check the background resources, and maybe learn something while seeing if there are any holes to poke in them.
A crusading newspaper series like this illustrates why one should pray that revenue via things like Kindle and Amazon’s thingie, or some other break-out business game changer that spews $$$$s, not only puts the NYT firmly in the black but somehow bring other once-muscular metros back from their intensive care units.
One must mention that this is the second immense and worthy dirty water project recently from the nation’s biggest news outlets – last year the Associated Press dove deeply into the hazards of medical and drug waste in the waters via its Pharmawater series.
- Charlie Petit
