VALLEY SPRINGS — At a recent meeting of the Ozark Mountain Regional Public Water Authority board, board chairman Andy Anderson encouraged as many customers and board members as possible to attend a hear this coming Thursday regarding the mandate to fluoridate the system’s drinking water.
Arkansas Act 197 of 2011 requires all water systems with more than 5,000 customers to fluoridate water.
In 2015, the water authority appealed the state Health Department’s requirement that it also add fluoride to water. The authority sells treated water to 18 water systems, so it maintains it doesn’t have 5,000 customers. In addition, none of those individual systems have 5,000 or more customers.
Anderson recently told board members that fluoride has been proven to leach lead from plumbing once fluoride is added. He said the city of Harrison has had more problems with lead showing up in residential drinking water since the Carroll Boone Water Association began fluoridating water in mid-2015.
Anderson also mentioned a problem with fluoride in water in Utah.
The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper reported last month that Sandy City, Utah, had been cited in February for having high levels of lead, copper and fluoride in the city’s drinking water. Residents were advised not to drink the water or use it for cooking until it was confirmed safe.
The newspaper quoted the Utah Department of Environmental Quality as saying an overfeed of fluoride into the water system after a winter storm and related power outage likely caused the high levels of heavy metals.
Anderson said that event made people sick and even damaged some water lines. He thought a lawsuit could easily be filed.
“It’s a liability for us if we put the dadgummed stuff in,” Anderson told board members.
Anderson said he had hoped to introduce testimony at the Thursday hearing to explain all those matters, but he was told it is only an administrative appeal and no further testimony would be allowed.
“We know that over 99 percent of water going into homes is not consumed but goes down the drain,” Anderson wrote in a letter to board members. “Community water fluoridation could not be cost justified even if it did prevent cavities.”
But Anderson said there is one problem that needed to be addressed.
When the authority decided to appeal the Health Department’s requirement, all 18 water systems were on board. Only 16 of the 18 systems contributed to the legal defense fund and Anderson has personally contributed enough money to cover the most recent legal invoices.
In the beginning, the authority’s first lawyer estimated it would cost about $12,500 for the entire legal battle. But that attorney has since gone on to another job and the new lawyers will need an additional $7,500 to finish the appeal.
“I am asking that each customer entity contribute to help us take this to the finish line,” Anderson said in the letter. “Mockingbird Hill and Mt Sherman have each contributed $500 additional and believe that would be a fair amount for each customer entity. One of our operators has pledged $100 so that our operators will not be put in harm’s way by handling this caustic substance.”
The hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday, March 7, in the Boone County Courthouse.
Anderson asked that as many concerned citizens as possible attend the hearing as a display to the court that the authority does not “consent to having a drug added to our water supply.”
*Original article online at http://newtoncountytimes.com/news/board-chairman-fluoridating-water-could-be-a-liability/article_1155c7b4-41b9-11e9-a38d-ab1258f1624b.html
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