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At last, residents can drink the water
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN, Times Staff Writer HOLIDAY -- Earl Nelson no longer has to use bottled water to cook his eggs. He doesn't have to drive to his son's house to take a shower. The resident of Adell Gardens and about four dozen others like him finally have their homes hooked up to county water more than a decade after a gasoline spill contaminated their well water. "At least I can see through it and I can cook with it without it turning my tomatoes rusty," Nelson said. The county completed the last of the hookups at the end of April, spending almost all of the $200,000 committed by Chevron Corp. to fix the problem. Chevron, owner of the former gas station that environmental regulators said tainted wells in the Holiday neighborhood, pitched in to help cover the cost of laying water lines to the homes. Now that the work is done, about $21,000 remains from that commitment for future repairs or related problems that arise in Adell Gardens. County utilities staffers plan to present the accounting of the money from Chevron to the County Commission during its meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the West Pasco Government Center in New Port Richey. Environmental tests confirmed that neighborhood wells, west of Alt. U.S. 19 near the Pinellas County line, are polluted with low levels of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, which can leave an oily film in the water. The compound, added to gas to make it burn cleaner, has caused cancer in rodents and is a suspected human carcinogen. Adell Gardens residents had said they learned in 1999 that the state departments of Health and Environmental Protection had spent the better part of a decade testing their wells for MTBE. Although the chemical was found in several wells in varying amounts, state environmental officials said the residents weren't informed of the test results because those results fell below the state's established guidelines. But in some cases, the levels were above those tentatively recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and residents begged the county to help them find a new source of water. -- Saundra Amrhein covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is
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From today's Pasco Times |
