Residents of the village of Crestwood, Illinois, just south of Chicago are frightened and angry as they demand answers as to why they were drinking toxic water from a well the town’s leaders said was not being used.
In 1985 the Illinois EPA began a statewide well testing program. One of the wells on the list to test was Crestwood’s. The state found traces of the chemical perchloroethylene, which is commonly used in dry cleaning. Within a year the state of Illinois and Crestwood officials agreed the well would no longer be used and the village would purchase Lake Michigan water for it’s supply. After the agreement, testing of the well ceased and that seemed to be the end of the issue.
But instances of various forms of cancer and other illnesses began plaguing the town of roughly 12,000. In 1999, Crestwood resident Patricia Krause began trying to find answers as to why her three children were suffering almost constantly from a variety of illnesses ranging from whooping cough to leukemia. She eventually found herself in Springfield, Illinois pouring over documents at the state’s EPA office. She discovered the well water which residents and the state were told was no longer in use was in fact being mixed with Lake Michigan water, sometimes by as much as twenty percent.
The state administered new tests in 2006 and discovered the dry cleaning solvent had broken down from perchloroethylene into vinyl chloride, a chemical so harmful there is no tolerable amount for human consumption. The well was permanently sealed in 2007 but the question remained in Crestwood…what damage had been done to residents who drank the contaminated water for more than twenty years?
The Illinois Department of Public Health joined the investigation along with a division of the CDC to find out if there is a link between vinyl choride in the water and instances of cancer in Crestwood. Through records kept by Illinois’ cancer registy, a spike in a variety of cancers was found, including lung and liver cancer. In several cases the numbers were double what was the normal rate for the rest of Cook County. Lawsuits began popping up against Crestwood, the villages former mayor Chester Stranczek who was in office from 1969 til 2007 as well as his son and current mayor Robert. And there is also concern at the Federal level. Both the U.S. Attorney’s office and the federal EPA are also looking into the matter.
Saturday March 13th, representatives of the Illinois Department of Public Health, the state’s EPA held a forum in Crestwood to explain if they’d found the smoking gun linking the elevated rates of cancer to the town’s well water. Residents were given a disappointing, “we don’t see a connection” as an answer. The lack of a strong enough link is due to a variety of factors. Exposure to Vinyl Chloride is usually associated with industrial sites and comes at a much higher level. And testing is sparse on the well and just how much of the contaminated water was mixed with the Lake Michigan water. In the end due to a margin of error which has to be taken into account with so much that isn’t know both about the effects of Vinyl Chloride and the exact situation Crestwood is in, the state’s doctors had to say, there is direct link between the increase in cancer in Crestwood and the well water.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Crestwood’s leaders are completely off the hook. The strongest case against the village may be from the Illinois State’s Attorney General who is suing Crestwood for lying to it’s residents and the state when it said well water wasn’t being used when it was. But even if found guilty of all counts in the nine count indictment, Crestwood would only have to pay as much as $540,000. Village leaders wouldn’t talk to Fox News about the story due to pending litigation. But in a written statement Crestwood officials maintain they were never told specifically not to use the water by the state EPA. The state EPA maintains it did tell Crestwood to stop using the well.
Meanwhile the scrutiny of cancer cases in Crestwood will continue to be monitored…probably forever…leaving residents just as frightened and angry as when they first learned they had been drinking contaminated water.