Study finds high arsenic levels in Calif. prison drinking water

Sept. 22, 2022
A new study finds that the drinking water supply for a Central Valley prison and multiple nearby Central Valley communities have had arsenic levels exceeding 10 ppb over the last 20 years.

A new study from the University of California Berkeley and Virginia Tech finds that the drinking water supply in Kern Valley State Prison, Allensworth, McFarland, and Delano over the last 20 years had arsenic levels exceeding 10 parts per billion (ppb), the federal maximum level for the contaminant.

Reported by Kara Manke through UC Berkeley News, the study processed water quality data over 20 years at the four locations. The communities’ water supply arsenic levels sometimes exceeded federal standards.

“We conducted this study, in part, to try and better understand how disaggregated water quality data could be used to identify potential historic exposures to drinking water contaminants amongs incarcerated and non-incarcerated populations sharing similar groundwater,” study senior author Alasdair Cohen told UC Berkeley News.

Sometimes, even after a community received funding for arsenic remediation, the levels exceeded federal standards. The study also says that some of the high arsenic levels never received official violations from the California Division of Drinking Water.

“To our knowledge, Kern Valley State Prison was built without arsenic remediation plans, even though some of the early water quality data suggested the system would soon be out of compliance with the new arsenic standard,” Rempel told UC Berkeley News. “That meant thousands of people were likely drinking contaminated water until the treatment plant came online.”

Read the full story here.

About the Author

Jeremy Wolfe

Jeremy Wolfe is a former Editor for WaterWorld magazine.

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