Drinking water

He also said that if he needed to revamp and retool the water system, he would do it.

And so his response is important because the owner has a role in addressing the water system, but residents were still dealing with questions about how to get enough safe water and what would happen next.

What can property owners do to make their drinking water safe when there's arsenic in the supply?

State officials told me that arsenic can, again, be removed with specialized water treatment systems.

and in the New Jersey litigation against 3M and DuPont as well.

The argument was the presence of PFOA in your drinking water doesn't mean that there's a harm, doesn't mean there's a natural resource damage just because there's a molecule there.

And our argument was, in fact, it does mean that there's a harm.

And gratefully, U.S. EPA has now regulated these chemicals to a level that says, you know what, if you're drinking it, it's bad for you.

And so if you put it in my drinking water, the mere presence of PFOA in my drinking water is a harm.

It is a natural resource damage.

And if you don't mind, I want to back up a little bit and talk about the difference between natural resource damages and remediation.

That my citizens will get cancer because they are drinking at that level.

It's public health, and it's about giving people water they can trust.

He also wrote a children's book titled Clean Water Is Awesome! No, Really! And he donates and matches every dollar earned to support clean water initiatives.

So today we're gonna dive into the real state of the United States drinking water and why hydration is a public health issue, and how Flow Water is trying to solve a problem most people don't know they have.

So grab a glass of filtered water, maybe like me, alkalized water, take a deep breath, and let's dive into this conversation with Rick Razgaitis.

All right.

Well, Raz, thank you so much for coming on Anatomical Gangster and telling us all about this pursuit of helping people get educated about water.

And I want you to talk a little bit about this passion that you have about why clean water is important to you and that personal health shift, and what, what was the thing that made you realize that hydration wasn't just a life choice, but it was really a public health issue?

Well, Sue, thanks for having me on.

If the rain happens close to the water treatment plant, it inundates the plant.

So the plant can detect that the inflows change and it can adjust, so therefore safe water comes out.

But it takes 12 hours to do it.

So in the meantime, non-potable water is being pumped out for 12 hours.

[upbeat music]

Hello everyone, and welcome to Clean Water Conversations, the podcast where we have casual discussions about creating clean and clear waterways right here in Lancaster County.

I'm Ken.

Hello everyone, this is Allison.

Okay.

Okay.

The chamber was one of the original organizations that helped put together Lancaster Clean Water Partners.

Yes.

But there's a really interesting transition in the around 1800, where when you have piped water systems introduced to cities, parasites just disappear.

And in the in the archaeological record, you have got a very clear line where once you can get that separation of clean water and dirty water, they're gone.

And that's that's the end of them, which is interesting.

really that's interesting that's an interesting benefit of the kind of industrialisation that happens in cities when there's so many other problems but that's a big

But that's what kicks off, I think, the London race to sell people water.

But

then there's this big shift away from these ad hoc water systems towards... city wide systems and probably I would argue one of the big things that happens in terms of urban organisation is people have to get together and say, what are we going to do with this waste material and how are we going to get clean water into the city? And a lot of urban development and urban structures of control happen when city councils and individuals start to make those decisions.

So even in even in the medieval period, you get issues where people want to lay drains for getting rid of waste material or drains for pipes to bring in water.

I'm your host, Margaret Walls.

Today on the show, we're gonna talk about drinking water in the United States and why you might have turned on your tap this morning and had a drink without worrying about whether the water was safe.

My guests are David Keiser and Joseph Shapiro.

Dave is Professor of Water Policy and Management at the Yale School of the Environment, and Joe is Chancellor's Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Joe and Dave are co-authors, along with Bash Mazumder and David Molitor, of an important new paper.

I think it's a great paper.

It's entitled Water Works: Causes and Consequences of Safe Drinking Water in America, which has been conditionally accepted in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

So I, I told Dave after I read this paper, I feel like it's a real tour de force.