ARSENIC AND OLD WAYS

      FALLON -- A blond fourth-grader in a Minnie Mouse T-shirt gulps some of the nation's most arsenic-tainted drinking water from a hallway water fountain.
      In a nearby classroom, well-behaved 6-year-olds sip from bottles of tap water that some scientists say could cause fatal cancer in one in 50 people.
      It's an ordinary school day in a small town fighting to keep its water polluted.
      The aquifer beneath this placid Navy town contains arsenic at twice the maximum level allowed by safe drinking water laws. For almost 30 years, city officials skeptical of federal regulators have refused to filter the toxic element from their wells.
      "It's the Mount Everest of arsenic situations," said Jon Merkle, an environmental scientist in the Environmental Protection Agency's San Francisco office. "I would call it a long-term drinking-water emergency."
      Some federal housing programs have cut off aid to the area, and the EPA is threatening to fine Fallon $27,500 a day until the city complies with the agency's standard.
      Yet there is no clear-cut evidence of arsenic-related illness here. And city officials scoff at the idea that their refusal to install a costly water treatment system could be causing hundreds of needless cancer deaths.
      "We don't believe there is a health hazard," City Attorney Mike Mackedon said. "I regard it as a legitimate dispute. They regard it as a matter of obedience. This is power and arrogance."
      These are the first salvos in a public health battle promising to spread far beyond the arid Lahontan Valley.
      The EPA is expected by Jan. 1, 2001, to drastically lower the limit for arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to as little as 5 parts per billion. On New Year's Day, thousands of communities from New Hampshire to California could be in violation of the stricter new standard.
      The cost of compliance for utilities nationwide could spiral into hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars.
      "So far, this is the most expensive drinking water regulation ever promulgated," said Michelle Frey, a Colorado-based environmental engineer who studied the standard for the municipal water industry.
      Observers on all sides expect the acrimony in Fallon to spread across the country as lawsuits and intergovernmental battles erupt over the bills for cleaning arsenic from water supplies. Some even say the fighting could change the way Americans receive that most essential commodity: unlimited safe drinking water.

     A losing battle
      A small group of Fallon's most senior citizens gather most mornings at the Depot Restaurant and Casino on Williams Avenue to pass the time of day as they wash down steaming cups of coffee with tall glasses of iced tap water.
      At 100 parts per billion, the arsenic in that water almost certainly threatens public health, say scientists, environmentalists and even water industry officials arguing for a relatively lenient new standard.
      After decades of resistance, Fallon officials in 1990 promised to build a filtration system, but only after a new standard is finalized. EPA officials say that pledge doesn't allow the city to continue violating the current limit.
      City officials acknowledge they could be fighting a losing battle against the federal government. Yet, many residents maintain they don't believe the arsenic is harming them.
      "I think that's what keeps us young, that Fallon water," said 72-year-old Elmo Dericco, the city's retired school superintendent and a 45-year resident.
      Many in Fallon accuse the federal government of using shaky science in a vengeful attempt to financially cripple the town. Fallon, population 8,500, has sued a host of federal agencies for transferring farmers' irrigation water to local American Indian tribes and environmental projects.
      "The federal government's dictating, is what they're doing," said Mario Recanzone, a 78-year-old senior state judge who has lived in Fallon 50 years. "I think they're more concerned with the fish and wildlife than they are with human beings."
      Other residents have turned to bottled water for drinking and cooking, saying they no longer know whether their tap water is poisoning them.
      The local High Mountain Spring Water Co. trucks water from the Sierra Nevada to 900 homes throughout Fallon. And on most afternoons, shoppers push carts groaning with bottled water through the local Wal-Mart parking lot.
      Interior decorator Denise Lund, 37, said she has strained her pocketbook with daily purchases of bottled water for her and her first-grade daughter, Savannah, to drink and cook their meals.
      "It does add up," she said. "If our regular water was good I wouldn't have to be spending that. I don't want her drinking it."

     Expensive proposition
      Natural arsenic deposits, not industrial pollution, create most drinking water contamination nationwide, experts say.
      In wetter regions, rainfall long ago leached the arsenic out of soil and rocks. In the arid West, flowing water continues to carry high levels of arsenic into groundwater supplies.
      "Arsenic is pretty much ubiquitous," said Alan Welch, a United States Geological Survey hydrologist in Carson City.
      The financial effect of the lower arsenic standard is expected to be highest in mineral-rich Western states like Nevada.
      "I doubt if anyone west of Denver that's on groundwater is going to come out unscathed," said Alan Roberson, director of regulatory affairs for the 56,000-member American Water Works Association.
      When Fallon officials contemplate filtering arsenic from the city's water, they paint this dire picture:
      A filtration plant could cost between $10 million and $20 million. Without state or federal financial assistance, the expense would be passed on to consumers.
      Skyrocketing bills would force massive water cutbacks in a community that proudly calls itself "the Oasis of Nevada," an island of greenery in the alkaline Northern Nevada desert.
      The average monthly water bill could rise from about $20 to $100 in a town populated largely by retirees, military families, farmers and school district employees. The town's annual budget is $5.4 million.
      "Your town goes from being green to rolling tumbleweeds," said five-year Mayor Ken Tedford, whose uncle and grandfather held the office before him. "Instead of grass out there we'd have gravel and dirt."
      The cost of complying nationwide with a 5 parts per billion standard has been estimated at as much as $17 billion to build new systems and as much as $630 million a year to operate them.
      "It is going to hit groundwater systems in a very big way," said Frey, the environmental engineer whose water industry-funded study produced the figures.
      A 1999 EPA report estimated that a 5 parts per billion standard would affect 4,923 water systems nationwide and compliance costs could reach $686 million a year. As many as 450 Nevada water systems might have to spend $350 million to build new filtration systems and $18 million a year to operate them, according to the Nevada Rural Water Association.
      Arsenic levels in Colorado River water rarely exceed 5 parts per billion. But the Southern Nevada Water Authority likely will have to filter wells serving Jean and Searchlight, the latter of which has contained as much as 10 parts per billion, General Manager Pat Mulroy said.
      Some environmentalists believe the costs of filtering arsenic have been overstated.
      Erik Olson, a senior attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said the EPA probably has exaggerated compliance costs. And federal funding for rural water systems could defray some expenses.
      Still, customers in small towns could end up paying, as the mayor asserts, an additional $80 a month for water, Olson acknowledged.
      "That still seems a little high, but it's within the realm of possibility," Olson said. "When a system gets really small it doesn't have economies of scale."
      Larger utilities' customers probably would see their water bills rise by only $26 a year, a reasonable price to pay for a lowered cancer risk, he said.
      "Most people spend more on buying a can of soda or a bottle of water per day than they would be spending in a week for this," he said.
      The council plans to sue the EPA for failing to meet a January deadline for formally proposing a new arsenic standard.
      In Fallon, the fight over arsenic has gone beyond dollar figures. For many here, refusing to filter arsenic has become a point of civic pride. Until late last month, Fallon refused to obey an EPA order to attach to monthly water bills a flier warning residents to seek alternative sources of drinking water.
      The federal government hasn't taken kindly to the city's stance. The EPA has threatened fines. And five years ago, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, the Agriculture Department and the Veterans Administration ceased insuring mortgages for new homes in the area.
      "It's not a safe place and so we won't insure the mortgages there," said HUD spokeswoman Sandi Abadinsky.
      The USDA and VA accepted Fallon officials' promise that they would comply when the new standard is released, and they have begun insuring mortgages again.
      Beyond the expected fiscal fights and lawsuits, a lowered arsenic standard could serve as a challenge to a basic presumption of modern American life: that anyone, anywhere can turn a tap and drink plentiful, perfectly potable water.
      As scientists continue to discover previously unknown health dangers in drinking water, many of the nation's largest utilities quietly have begun talking about the possibility of providing two distinct products: tap water guaranteed safe only for cooking, washing and watering lawns, and distilled drinking water delivered by truck to individual homes, Mulroy said.
      The predicted high-dollar battle over arsenic, Mulroy said, could turn that talk into a full-scale movement.
      "It's the drop that makes the bucket overflow," she said. "I really think it will start people thinking about what are we doing and are there better ways of doing this."

     Studies under way
      Scientists only recently have begun to conduct large-scale studies of Fallon and the handful of American communities whose drinking water supplies contain similar arsenic levels.
      "There's nothing quite like it," said Dr. Allan Smith, head of the University of California, Berkeley's Arsenic Health Effects Research Program, which is conducting the first comprehensive study of potential arsenic-related diseases in Fallon. "It's by far the largest population exposed above the current drinking water standard."
      Smith sat on a National Academy of Sciences panel that last year called the current 50 parts per billion limit unsafe and recommended that it be lowered as quickly as possible.
      The report was based on studies from developing countries such as Bangladesh, where arsenic levels at hundreds and thousands of parts per billion were demonstrated to have almost certainly caused diseases including bladder and skin cancer.
      But data about lower levels of arsenic remain sketchy. Even members of the academy's panel say that a 5 parts per billion standard might not be supported by available studies.
      "I think five is maybe a little bit overcautious, but nobody knows for sure," said Dr. Curtis Klaassen, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
      Registered nurse Arlene McDonnell supervised a study searching for arsenic-related health problems after she joined Fallon's only hospital in 1982.
      "At first I was really worried," she said. "You'd think we'd find something. We didn't find anything. When you find absolutely nothing, then you begin to wonder."
      Why don't people in Fallon seem to be getting sick?
      The town is so small that a higher cancer risk probably would not be noticeable to the average person, scientists say.
      Epidemiologists expect 20 people out of 100 to die of cancer, Smith said. One in 100 Fallon residents could be dying of arsenic-related cancers, but those 80 additional deaths in 8,000 might easily be going unnoticed, he said.
      The scientific uncertainty is fueling many Fallon residents' harsh criticisms of the EPA.
      "These suckers can't prove what level you can poison someone with," said Dr. Gary Ridenour, a local internist. "I've got 15 years of seeing 30 patients a day with no evidence of arsenic poisoning."

     Resentful dependence
      Like many towns in a state where 87 percent of the land is federally owned, Fallon is economically dependent on Washington, D.C., but bitterly resentful of federal influence.
      At the end of the 19th century, Fallon was an arid and thinly populated town site suffering from a statewide decline in mining revenues, seasonal droughts and bitter, snowbound winters, according to local histories.
      That all changed in 1902, when brash Nevada Sen. Francis G. Newlands ushered in an national era of massive federal water projects by shepherding through Congress the National Reclamation Act, which authorized the building of dams and reservoirs funded by federal land sales throughout the West.
      In 1914, federal engineers built the Lahontan Dam across the Carson River, diverting its waters into flood irrigation canals crosshatching the isolated townsite. The thinly populated, arid area transformed seemingly overnight into a lush expanse of alfalfa and cottonwood trees.
      The river water remained dedicated to irrigation. In 1941, the town drilled a well hundreds of feet into the aquifer flowing through layers of basalt deep beneath the town site.
      Fallon, the neighboring Paiute-Shoshone Indian reservation and the nearby Fallon Naval Air Station still draw their water from the aquifer. The irrigation water has become the subject of at least three lawsuits between the city and various federal agencies.
      The visible epicenter of the arsenic problem in Fallon is a rocky bluff nicknamed Rattlesnake Hill, where three water storage tanks supplying the city, the reservation and the base share pride of place with a towering illuminated cross.
      The tribe and base have broken with the town in their approach to the arsenic problem. Tribal leaders and Navy officials have shipped in thousands of gallons of bottled water, and they are preparing to install filtration systems for their wells.
      "The young people and the old people could be affected by this, and we'd rather take care of it," said tribal chairman Alvin Moyle.
      Mayor Tedford and many of the town's leading citizens continue to believe that the federal pressure is part of a larger effort to shut down the irrigation-dependent agricultural economy in Fallon and other Western towns.
      "I think the Indians and the environment are a means to an end," Tedford said. "I think they want to cut as much irrigation water out of the community as they can."
      Tedford has shepherded his city into the middle of the legal fights, whose costs have spiraled to $1 million during the past five years.
      The tall, affable owner of one of the town's biggest tire and auto service centers, Tedford recently sat in a comfortably upholstered leather chair in front of a desk decorated with a mug of and several busts of Abraham Lincoln.
      "I think he'd do the same thing in my spot," Tedford said, gesturing at a bust of Lincoln with a bottle of water from his office refrigerator. "He'd shake his head at federal involvement in our lives. It's a fight for our community. It's our life, that's it."

     Lower levels likely needed

      A current Environmental Protection Agency proposal would lower the federally accepted level of arsenic in water to 5 parts per billion. Dozens of Nevada water systems, listed with current arsenic levels below, might have to spend millions to comply with a new limit. They include:

      --Fallon: 100 parts per billion
      --Goldfield: 36 parts per billion
      --Nevada Test Site: 29 parts per billion
      --Reno: 26 parts per billion
      --Nellis Air Force Base: 21 parts per billion
      --Panaca: 18 parts per billion
      --Elko: 12 parts per billion
      --Tonopah: 12 parts per billion
      --Searchlight: 10 parts per billion
      --Beatty: 10 parts per billion

     Source: Nevada Rural Water Association

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The aquifer beneath Fallon, a placid Navy town in Northern Nevada, contains arsenic at twice the maximum level allowed by safe drinking water laws.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Ian Taylor, 10, drinks from a water fountain at Best Elementary School.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Students' water bottles stand under a model clock inside an empty classroom at Best Elementary School in Fallon. Children drink tap water from the bottles so they won't become dehydrated during the school day in the arid desert valley. The water contains some of the highest arsenic levels found in drinking water in the country.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Feed store employee Earl Mickles, 19, above, unloads gallon jugs of water outside the Fallon Wal-Mart, a regular chore for him and his family. "It began because (tap water) didn't taste that great and then we found out about the arsenic and how bad it is for you, and that became the biggest problem."
Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Delivery driver Trent Parker hauls containers of Sierra Nevada spring water into a Fallon-area home. The local High Mountain Spring Water Co. delivers to about 900 customers unhappy with the city's tap water.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.
 
 

Five-year Fallon Mayor Ken Tedford stands on Rattlesnake Hill, the visible epicenter of the city's arsenic problem.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Paiute-Shoshone Tribal Chairman Alvin Moyle stands before the tribe's water tower on the reservation outside Fallon.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Retired teacher Ed Arciniega, 75, drinks tap water as former Fallon school superintendent Elmo Dericco, middle, and Rudy Bria talk with friends at the Depot Restaurant and Casino.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.