Interview with Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment

Interview with Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment

Part I

00:00 Jessica Wertling: Can you please tell me who you are, and what Citizens Campaign for the Environment does?

00::04 Adrienne Esposito: I’m Adrienne Esposito, the executive director for Citizens Campaign for the Environment. We’re a bi-state environmental lobby organization that works to protect our natural resources; everything from drinking water protection, air quality - we work on renewable energy resources, greater recycling, and protecting our oceans, estuaries and bays.

00::21 Wertling: Why might the chemical MTBE be dangerous to consume?

00::27 Esposito: MTBE was an additive to gasoline that was used back in…that was put in gasoline back in 1993 here in New York state …the problem with MTBE is that it leaks out – just like gasoline does – and it can enter into our fragile underground drinking water supply, known as an aquifer system. Aquifers are really…the drinking water …means that the drinking water comes from underneath the ground. We have three layers of aquifers. MTBE is considered a chemical contaminant, which means that it is listed by the EPA as a known carcinogenic material, which means that it causes cancer.

01::06 Wertling: Does it cause things like sore throats and headaches or stomach aches?

01::10 Esposito: Really high quantities, and even low quantities, at a constant exposure rate of MTBE, can make people sick. And causing cancer is the end result, but also, it can do things like make you nauseous, it actually smells like turpentine, when a very strong, gasoline type smell in the water when it’s at high quantities.

01::34 Wertling: Is Nassau County drinking water dangerous because of MTBE?

01::38 Esposito: Well actually, all drinking water on Nassau and Suffolk county have MTBE in them. Sadly, what happened is that a lot of these gasoline stations leak –

[Interruption]

Part II

00::06 Wertling: Is Nassau County drinking water generally dangerous?

00::10 Esposito: All of Nassau County, as well as Suffolk County, drink from our underground drinking water supplies. So whatever chemicals and contaminants are in those supplies, unfortunately, also ends up in our drinking water. The good news is that the water companies all test rigorously before water is distributed and served to the public. However, it is when that contamination gets into the drinking water supplies before it is tested. So, there is a chance throughout Nassau and Suffolk County that contamination is getting to people’s homes before the water company knows about it. But there is a rigorous testing, it occurs four times per year. Once anything is found in a drinking water well or supply, that well is then closed down before it is distributed to the homes.

00::59 Wertling: Is there a history of chemicals finding their way into water?

01::02 Esposito: Yes. That is one of the biggest problems on Long Island facing our drinking water supply is that chemicals leak into and leach into the drinking water. Gasoline stations leak; that’s what happens with their old tanks. So as the gasoline leaked into the ground water and the MTBE went with it, it can - the problem with MTBE is that it flows very freely and very quickly through the aquifer system or through the underground water supply, thereby contaminating a lot in a high quantity of drinking water with even just a little bit of contamination. And that’s a problem. That’s a very big problem.

01::41 Wertling: Once MTBE enters drinking water, how long does it stay there?

01::44 Esposito: MTBE will flow with the drinking water and also it will become dispersed as it enters the drinking water. So how long MTBE stays in there really depends on how quickly the water is moving through the ground and also it depends on how much of it was there. It doesn’t magically go away. It might dilute and it might disperse, but eventually it gets discharged into our bays and that’s not good news either.

02::15 Wertling: What is being done to prevent MTBE from entering drinking water?

02::19 Esposito: Well, the good news about this is that New York State, due to intensive lobbying by Citizens Campaign for the Environment and other environmental groups, banned MTBE from being part of the gasoline supply. And that ban went into effect in 2004. So, any MTBE that we have right now in our drinking water supply is really leftover or legacy waste, as it’s called; left over from past practices in 1993 to 2004. So, right now the gasoline that’s being pumped here on Long Island doesn’t have MTBE anymore. In addition, when an MTBE contamination plume or a contaminate plume is found on Long Island, it’s being filtered out of the drinking water by very sophisticated and very expensive equipment to filter it out of the water supply so that the public is not drinking it, and is not being made unhealthy because of it.

03::19 Wertling: How else might people be able to protect themselves?

03::21 Esposito: Well one thing that everyone on Long Island should know about, is that there is a report issued by their water company once a year called the Annual Water Supply statement. This is a report that will tell people not only about MTBE, but also about all other contaminants that might be found in the drinking water supply for that particular community. All people have to do is ask the water company to send them the water report; it’s called the Annual Water Supply Report. And also, members of the public should ask for the supplement as well. The supplement…the supplement will have additional information for people. That report will be very interesting because it will tell you not only what’s in the drinking water, but what is the standard. So, for instance, MTBE has a standard right now of 10 parts per billion. So you might see, some people might have three parts per billion or two parts per billion. Still it’s a contaminant, still in the drinking water, but yet it would be considered under standards for what New York State has set as a health threshold. So, it’s something to be concerned about, we are concerned about the number of different contaminants found in Long Island’s drinking water supply and the number of different contaminants that people are exposed to pretty much on a routine basis.

04::37 Wertling: Is there anything else you’d like to add or think people should know?

04::40 Esposito: I think that one of the most important things about protecting our drinking supply on Long Island is that we need open space. Because when the land surface is open, that is what allows for the rainwater to seep back down underground in a cleaner fashion. So, open space is good for the quality of drinking water and also for the quantity of drinking water. We have to remember that everything we do on the land surface on Long Island impacts the quality of our drinking water supply under the land. And that’s why it’s so important that industrial wastes is not illegally discharged onto the land, that gasoline stations are being monitored so that they’re not leaking gasoline, and that even the public does their part – we should not be using pesticides anymore, we should not be using fertilizers. We need to be very vigilant about what to do to protect our drinking water supplies and it’s gonna mean making choices, in some cases, hard choices. But we think those are choices worth making in order to ensure a clean, healthy supply of drinking water.