Toxic Waters

In 1956, Reserve Mining Company, a jointly-owned subsidiary of Republic and Armco Steel corporations, came to the western end of Lake Superior, as the first of a welcome series of operations to revive the Mesabi iron ore range, and the economy of that region, by processing taconite into usable iron ore. Nobody was much concerned at the time that the plant would eventually be dumping some 67,000 tons of tailings daily into the pristine waters of the largest freshwater lake in the world. As the waters around the discharge point became murkier, however, and as the murkiness spread, local citizen concern about the pollution began to mount. By February 1972, the federal government had been prodded into suing Reserve Mining on the grounds that it was in violation of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the Refuse Act. By the time the case actually came to trial, in August 1973, a new element had come into the picture, suddenly catapulting the case into the national limelight. Work at the National Water Quality Laboratory, triggered by an almost chance encounter between one of the local activists and a knowledgeable geologist, established that Lake Superior water in the vicinity of Silver Bay, Minnesota (site of the Reserve plant not far from Duluth), contained substantial amounts of a submicroscopic substance which looked very much like amosite asbestos. The fibers could be identified only with an electron microscope and were very short—shorter than had previously been considered a hazard to health. Yet there was evidence enough at least to suspect that they might be a cause of gastrointestinal cancer. They had been ingested in considerable quantities by the 200,000 people in Duluth and other nearby communities who used Lake Superior for their water supply, and unless some action were taken they would continue to be ingested by hundreds of thousands of people for many more years before the long incubation period for this type of cancer would produce any noticeable epidemiological consequences. Thus, the suit was amended to include this public health issue. The list of plaintiffs by now includes not only the U.S. government, but the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan; five environmental organizations; and the cities of Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin.

U.S. District Court judge Miles Lord ruled on the case on April 20, 1974. Reacting in part to the uncooperativeness of Reserve Mining including the introduction of misleading evidence regarding its consideration of alternatives to lake discharge, but basing his decision on the principle that a reasonably possible threat to the public health was enough to justify emergency action, Judge Lord ordered an immediate shutdown, thus threatening the jobs of 3,000 workers, the entire economy of Silver Bay, and 12 percent of the country's domestic output of iron ore. The shutdown lasted less than three days: a temporary stay was obtained by Reserve Mining from the St. Louis Court of Appeals on April 22. A second Court of Appeals decision, on June 4, extended the stay for an additional seventy days, conditioned on good faith preparation and implementation by Reserve of an acceptable on-land disposal plan, and the Supreme Court declined to set aside this decision. Finally, in the light of apparent progress in negotiations between Reserve Mining and the state of Minnesota as to an on-land disposal site, the stay was continued indefinitely, pending final ruling on the appeal. But this was not until the Appeals Court had virtually ordered the company to give up its insistence on a particular site unacceptable to the state and to come up with a plan for a substitute, suggesting one at Lax Lake, despite reservations by both parties. Reserve mining said the site would cost some $243 million to prepare—an estimated $46 million more than its earlier choice, but less than half of what it had been claiming as the alternative to lake disposal in the earlier course of the proceedings.

The case is not yet concluded. In allowing Reserve Mining to continue operations pending final decision—due no later than January 31, 1975—the Appeals Court had differed from the District Court only as to whether the mere suspicion of a threat to the public health, based on limited evidence and no links to any actual cases of cancer, was reason enough, considering the economic damage, for immediate shutdown. From all appearances, the higher court does consider the evidence sufficient to warrant insistence on reasonable progress toward effective ameliorative action. As of year-end, Reserve Mining was still dragging its feet, and the possibility of yet another shutdown cannot be ruled out.

Meanwhile, though there are still those willing to demonstrate their conviction as to the purity of Superior water by drinking samples right out of the lake, water filtration in Duluth and other lake cities has become increasingly popular. CEO Chairman Russell W. Peterson specifically recommended the filtration of the water supplies of affected communities in a letter to the governors of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In April, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, acting under authority newly given it in 1974 amendments to the Flood Control Act, announced a program to supply micropore filter units for the water taps of public buildings in each of the affected communities and to provide interim water-supply treatment measures for four to six months until permanent treatment facilities could be completed. Many residents of the area began availing themselves of filtrated water at public taps, and others bought filtration devices to use at home. Still there were those who insisted that filtered water did not taste right and that public buildings should continue to provide some taps for those who preferred their Lake Superior water straight.

Great as was the national concern about crystal-blue waters in Minnesota, it took the muddied-up waters of the Mississippi to create the impetus that finally brought about passage of the Safe Water Act of 1974. Most particularly, it was found that the drinking water of the city of New Orleans (population 600,000) contained substantial amounts of carcinogens. In fact, the very chlorine which was put into the drinking water supply to rid it of infectious diseases was reacting with industrial pollutants carried down by the river to produce some of these cancer-causing compounds.

The public alarm was brought about largely through the research efforts and publicity initiated by the Environmental Defense Fund. One EDF study, which also covered other cities, concluded that the removal of carcinogens from New Orleans drinking water would save fifty lives a year. Nationwide, EDF said, "the presence of cancer-causing substances in drinking water is ubiquitous."

This EDF statement, issued in November 1974, was followed almost immediately by the release of an EPA survey on New Orleans, which found some 66 organic chemicals, at least some of them cancer-causing, in the city's water supply. The EPA promised a nationwide investigation, and later listed eighty cities under study, of which ten (including New York, Philadelphia, and Miami) would receive particularly detailed scrutiny.

Revelations like these clearly abetted passage of the Safe Drinking Water legislation, which had been languishing since 1973. The final legislation was a compromise, one that President Ford said, at his December 17 signing, he was not altogether happy with and intended would "be administered so as to minimize both Federal involvement and cost." This intent clearly will have to contend with the continued activism of the Environmental Defense Fund, among others. The EDF immediately petitioned EPA to take emergency action under the act to protect the drinking water of five communities: New Orleans; Jefferson Parish; Cincinnati; Duluth; and Evansville, Indiana. Robert Harris, the EDF scientist who had promoted interest in the subject with a series of articles he co-authored in Consumer Reports, pointed out that EPA's own tests had shown a number of noxious substances in the respective drinking supplies, including dieldrin, a pesticide that EPA had recently banned as an imminent health hazard.