102 YEARS TeTon Valley news - June 23, 2011 - Page a1

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Ken LevyTVN Staff

The last thing this valley needs is a water-quality crisis. Just ask the folks in tiny Drummond, Idaho (population 15).

You can’t drink the water in Drummond, unless you brought it in from somewhere else. This due to 1,400 gallons of spilled liquid fertilizer that found its way into the city’s water supplies. The resulting nitrates have contaminated the wells and water source, and residents must purchase water from outside sources for their everyday needs.

The community may install a water treatment system so residents can drink their own water, rather than have to purchase it, said Melinda Harper, source water protection specialist for the Idaho Rural Water Association.

The United States Department of Agriculture may help fund facility with as much as $150,000 from its Rural Development Emergency Community Water Assistance Grant, she said.

This grant could help cover the cost of an engineering review, development and installation of a water treatment system at Drummond’s wellhead that will remove nitrates from the groundwater, thus allowing the residents of Drummond to use their drinking water for drinking.

The spills, reportedly accidental, occurred separately in two years. The

first was 600 gallons and the second was 800 gallons, said Harper.

Nitrates are the biggest pollutants found in water, and they’re showing up in some private wells in Teton Valley’s water, Harper said.

“High levels of nitrates have been found in some private wells in the Teton Valley, scattered here and there,” she said. “No high nitrate levels have been found in any city or municipal wells that I am aware of.”

Harper said she is in the process of researching water quality information around the valley — primarily nitrates — and is developing Driggs’ source water protection plan. Friends of the Teton River will be assisting with public awareness, education and outreach aspects, she said.

She hopes to have a draft plan ready for review in about two weeks.

Harper told the Driggs City Council earlier this year that the city should consider the source water protection plan, which would include nitrate testing of wells to help public drinking systems and farms control nitrate contamination.

“People take drinking water for granted until it’s contaminated at the source,” she said.

Developing source-water protection plans includes creating a planning team that would inventory possible

Source water protection plan is forthcoming, officials say

Nuclear radiation in Teton Valley?

You’ll pay more for your

kid’s school lunch

Ken LevyTVN Staff

Although they found it indigestible, the Teton School District board of trustees decided June 13 to raise school lunch prices by 10 cents a meal, starting this coming school year.

They’re meeting federal mandates from the National School Lunch Program that require school districts to raise lunch prices by as much as 90 cents a meal, spread out over the next five years.

The NSLP subsidizes the free and reduced-price school lunch program and other school foodservice programs.

Full-price meals for youngsters not meeting eligibility requirements are due to go up over the next five years by 90 cents for elementary school students, 65 cents for middle school and 40 cents for high school.

“Let’s start low,” said David Heinemann, school board member, “because this could change. We can show that we’re moving toward the target.”

A dime at a time

Annie EbyTVN Intern

With Boise rainfall samples measuring by far the highest concentrations of radioactive nuclides in the country, apocalyptic rumors of nuclear disaster run rampant. Higher cancer rates, lower SAT scores, genetic mutations, and birth defects are just a few of the things doomsayers expect to see in the wake of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima’s Daiichi plant. But if the nuclear scare has you dumping milk and fleeing from radioactive rain, you might want to put the dangers into perspective.

Three months after the disaster frequently referred to as the worst nuclear event since Chernobyl, Japan’s situation remains as critical as the day the 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent some reactors at the Daiichi plant into nuclear meltdown and the others into a state of emergency. Once atoms begin nuclear fission, there is no way to stop the progress of radioactive decay. Unless contained, it will continue to threaten Japan for years.

Unfortunately, the radioactivity has been difficult to contain. As TEPCO threatens to release 40 Olympic pools worth of water, estimated to contain 10,000 times the legal concentrations of radioactivity, into the Pacific, and Japan admits radioactive emissions are more than twice the amounts originally

Radiation continued on A20

Water continued on A20

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