pbs高端访谈:保护公民免受污染饮水的威胁

 　　GWEN IFILL: Now NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien begins a two-part look at America's drinking water, and the regulatory system that is supposed to guarantee its safety.

　　His report is the result of a partnership¹ with the Center for Public Integrity. It begins in the small desert town that made Erin Brockovich a household name.

　　ROBERTA WALKER, Resident of Hinkley, Calif.:Come on, you want some water? Want to get some water? Come on.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:Clean water is something most of us take for granted, but not Roberta Walker. She, her dogs, and her family drink spring water that is either bottled or trucked in, because where she lives, people can't drink the well water.

　　Welcome to Hinkley, Calif.

　　ROBERTA WALKER:This is bought out, this home on the right. This is all boarded up. So you can see how these are all boarded up.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:Yes.

　　Roberta drove me around town, what's left of it.

　　ROBERTA WALKER:There was a home here on the corner and that, of course, is gone.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:It is a ghost town?

　　ROBERTA WALKER:Yes. Yes.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:The steady decline of Hinkley is rooted here at a natural gas pipeline² pumping station owned by the giant California utility Pacific Gas & Electric. In the 1950s and '60s, PG&E admits it dumped 26 tons of a coolant made of chromium 6 into unlined retaining ponds here. The chemical is toxic³ and causes cancer.

　　It leached⁴ into the soil and contaminated the aquifer⁵, the drinking water in Hinkley. The Hollywood version of the story is writ⁶ large in the movie "Erin Brockovich" released in 2000. Julia Roberts won an Academy Award for her portrayal⁷ of the crusading legal assistant who forced PG&E into a $333 million dollar settlement with the residents of Hinkley in 1996.

　　But, for Roberta, there was no Hollywood ending.

　　So your house was right about here?

　　ROBERTA WALKER:Yes.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:PG&E did buy and raze⁸ her old home, as they did for many others here. So she built this place on the outskirts⁹ of town out of harm's way, or so she thought.

　　So far, PG&E has spent $700 million dollars trying to clean up the stubborn mess. But the plume¹⁰ of chromium 6-tainted¹¹ water persists.

　　Sheryl Bilbrey is in charge of PG&E's remediation effort.

　　Why is it taking so long?

　　SHERYL BILBREY,Pacific Gas & Electric: It's a very complex project. We are highly regulated. There's a lot of interested parties. The other thing is, it's very important to us that we get it right.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:Recent testing shows there is still chromium 6 in the groundwater in Roberta Walker's neighborhood. It is less than it was in the bad old days, but Roberta is still girding to move once again, this time away from Hinkley.

　　Did you ever think you would ever have to deal with chromium 6 or PG&E again?

　　ROBERTA WALKER:Absolutely not. Absolutely not. In front of God and the world, they said they were going to clean it up.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:And?

　　ROBERTA WALKER:And they didn't. It was just—it's just a shocker.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:For the real-life Erin Brockovich, it was also an unwelcome surprise.

　　ERIN BROCKOVICH, Consumer Advocate: I thought it was being cleaned up. The state thought it was being cleaned up. The community thought it was being cleaned up. So here it is 10 years later, I'm not paying attention because I thought it was all being handled.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:And how are people finding you? Just through the social networking?

　　Brockovich is now an environmental activist¹² on a larger stage, curating a crowd-sourced map of reported cancer clusters, which she says are largely linked to chromium 6-contaminated water nationwide.

　　ERIN BROCKOVICH:There's more and more mounting evidence or what chromium 6 does to the human health, what it does to the environment, what it does to the air. Every community that I deal with that has been exposed to chromium 6, they have the same health symptoms, they have the same problems.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:In 2010, a nonprofit advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group, tested tap water in 35 U.S. cities; 31 of them were contaminated with chromium 6. Utility testing records show about 70 million Americans are drinking this tainted water.

　　With evidence mounting that chromium 6 may be more dangerous than once thought, the Environmental Protection Agency decided¹³ to revisit the drinking water standard for the chemical. The standard, 100 parts per billion, was set 20 years ago. It is 5,000 times greater than the California EPA's public health goal for chromium 6 in drinking water, .02 parts per billion.

　　Ann Mason is a senior director with the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical industry.

　　ANN MASON, American Chemistry Council: The people in the United States are drinking water that meets the EPA safe drinking water level.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:So, you—would you say categorically, it's OK? Everybody is safe?

　　ANN MASON:I would say if the drinking water meets the safe drinking water level, that EPA has set that level and that's the rule of the land as we see it right now.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:There is a lot of research that links chromium 6 in drinking water to cancer. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health weighed in with an eye-opening rodent¹⁴ study. It uncovered clear evidence that high doses of chromium 6 in drinking water cause cancer in rats and mice.

　　Heather White is executive director of the Environmental Working Group.

　　HEATHER WHITE,Environmental Working Group: We think the science is clear. There's been a lot more research that we have seen over the last decade that shows that there is a big cause for concern about drinking hexavalent chromium, whether it would be stomach cancer, whether it be liver damage, whether it be toxicity¹⁵. There's even been studies that shows that it can have reproductive health effects.

　　JULIA ROBERTS, Actress: By the way, we had that water brought in special for you folks. It came from the well in Hinkley.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:After the "Erin Brockovich" movie in 2000, California lawmakers decided life should imitate art. They chartered a so-called blue-ribbon panel of scientists to help set a chromium 6 drinking water standard for the state.

　　One of the scientists on the panel was this man, Dennis Paustenbach. The NewsHour and the Center for Public Integrity learned the company he ran, ChemRisk, had been hired by Pacific Gas & Electric during the lawsuit¹⁶. At the time, the most compelling scientific study that linked chromium 6 in drinking water to cancer came from China in 1987. It studied villagers in Liaoning Province who lived near a chromium ore smelter and drank tainted water for years.

　　The lead author, Dr. Zhang JianDong, found they had increased rates of stomach cancer. Acting¹⁷ on behalf of its client PG&E, ChemRisk paid Zhang to redo his study. Paustenbach offered this explanation before the California Senate.

　　DENNIS PAUSTENBACH, ChemRisk, Inc.: After he saw the questions that we raised about the analysis, he went back and examined and said, of course not. It can't be true. My original conclusions don't make sense.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:The revised study reversed the original conclusion that chromium 6 was the likely cause of the villagers' developing cancer.

　　Scientists at the California Environmental Protection Agency were skeptical¹⁸ and took a look at the underlying¹⁹ data themselves.

　　Allan Hirsch is with CAL/EPA.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:The original study itself, was it good science?

　　ALLAN HIRSCH, California Environmental Protection Agency: Well, our analysis which we completed in 2008 agreed with the original 1987 paper. And we found that the rates of stomach cancer in these five villages were significantly higher than stomach cancer rates in the overall province.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:The California EPA set its public health goal of .02 parts per billion in 2011. The next step, changing the drinking water standards, has not happened.

　　There's been a fair amount of study about hexavalent chromium over the years. Isn't the scientific jury in?

　　SHERYL BILBREY:I don't think so. There's a lot of scientists that are still debating that question. I think that's why the process has taken so long, from what I have read, both at EPA and at the state level. So, I think they're still trying to figure out exactly what is the right answer there.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:Back in Hinkley, I got tour of the massive PG&E cleanup project.

　　Kevin Sullivan is the engineer in charge.

　　KEVIN SULLIVAN, Pacific Gas & Electric: This barrier is about a half-mile-long.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:They are pumping ethanol into the ground, which converts chromium 6 into a more benign²⁰ form of the chemical called chromium 3. They have also planted acres of alfalfa that is irrigated²¹ with the tainted water. The rich organic soil also makes the conversion²².

　　So that is now chromium 3 in your hand.

　　KEVIN SULLIVAN:Exactly.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:There is so much alfalfa, the utility now owns a thriving dairy farm.

　　But since the ethanol injections began, a new problem seems to have surfaced. Residents have started reporting elevated levels of arsenic²³ and manganese in their wells. PG&E says it occurs naturally and has always been there. Nevertheless, when Sullivan appears at community meetings here.

　　KEVIN SULLIVAN:These are concentrations of over 100, OK? And we wanted to cut that off right there.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:There is dirty water on the table and angry accusations²⁴ in the air.

　　RICHARD JOHNSON,Resident of Hinkley, Calif.: The community is in an uproar²⁵ right now. We are not just being poisoned by chromium. We got high arsenic levels, manganese. All this can lead you to believe that PG&E really don't give a crap about any one of you.

　　TERESA SHEEFTSALL,Resident of Hinkley, Calif.: I don't want to live here. I don't want my family here. I have no choice. No one will buy my home. Who wants to move into this?

　　MILES O’BRIEN:But Sullivan insists they are making progress.

　　KEVIN SULLIVAN:We have cleaned up like 54 acres. Now, I know that doesn't—believe me, I understand that if it is not your property, what have you done for me lately? But 54 acres is a lot of progress in terms of getting this cleaned up. We have a lot longer to go, but these are positive signs that we have been able to achieve in the last few years.

　　MILES O’BRIEN:But Sullivan says it will be at least another 40 years before they're done with the cleanup here. It seems nothing moves quickly when the wells are poisoned.

　　GWEN IFILL:In part two of his report on Friday, Miles takes a closer look at the Environmental Protection Agency's system for regulating toxic chemicals in the environment.

　　Online, we go behind the scenes in Hinkley, and you can also check out chromium levels in the water of 31 U.S. cities.

1 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

2 pipeline   

n.管道，管线

参考例句：

• The pipeline supplies Jordan with 15 per cent of its crude oil.该管道供给约旦15%的原油。
• A single pipeline serves all the houses with water.一条单管路给所有的房子供水。

3 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

4 leached   

v.（将化学品、矿物质等）过滤( leach的过去式和过去分词 )；（液体）过滤，滤去

参考例句：

• They believe that the humic materials are leached from decaying plant materials. 他们认为腐植物料是从腐烂的植物体浸沥而来。 来自辞典例句
• The concept holds that uranium is leached by groundwater from tuffeceous rocks. 该理论认为，来自凝灰岩的地下水淋蚀铀。 来自辞典例句

5 aquifer   

n.含水土层

参考例句：

• An aquifer is a water-bearing rock stratum such as sandstone and chalk.地下蓄水层是一些有水的岩石层，如沙岩和白垩岩。
• The wine region's first water came from an ancient aquifer.用来灌溉这个地区葡萄园的第一批水来自古老的地下蓄水层。

6 writ   

n.命令状，书面命令

参考例句：

• This is a copy of a writ I received this morning.这是今早我收到的书面命令副本。
• You shouldn't treat the newspapers as if they were Holy Writ. 你不应该把报上说的话奉若神明。

7 portrayal   

n.饰演；描画

参考例句：

• His novel is a vivid portrayal of life in a mining community.他的小说生动地描绘了矿区的生活。
• The portrayal of the characters in the novel is lifelike.该书中的人物写得有血有肉。

8 raze   

vt.铲平，把(城市、房屋等)夷为平地，拆毁

参考例句：

• The nuclear weapons stored by the United States alone are sufficient to raze the planet.仅美国储存的核武器就足以毁灭地球。
• The earthquake made the city raze to the ground.地震把这个城市夷为平地。

9 outskirts   

n.郊外，郊区

参考例句：

• Our car broke down on the outskirts of the city.我们的汽车在市郊出了故障。
• They mostly live on the outskirts of a town.他们大多住在近郊。

10 plume   

n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰

参考例句：

• Her hat was adorned with a plume.她帽子上饰着羽毛。
• He does not plume himself on these achievements.他并不因这些成就而自夸。

11 tainted   

adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏

参考例句：

• The administration was tainted with scandal. 丑闻使得政府声名狼藉。
• He was considered tainted by association with the corrupt regime. 他因与腐败政府有牵连而名誉受损。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 activist   

n.活动分子，积极分子

参考例句：

• He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
• He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。

13 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

14 rodent   

n.啮齿动物；adj.啮齿目的

参考例句：

• When there is a full moon,this nocturnal rodent is careful to stay in its burrow.月圆之夜，这种夜间活动的啮齿类动物会小心地呆在地洞里不出来。
• This small rodent can scoop out a long,narrow tunnel in a very short time.这种小啮齿动物能在很短的时间里挖出一条又长又窄的地道来。

15 toxicity   

n.毒性，毒力

参考例句：

• The hoarse grunt or squeal is characteristic of toxicity.嘶哑的哼声和叫声是中毒的特征。
• Dieldrin is related to aldrin,and its toxicity to earthworms is similar.狄氏剂与艾氏剂有关，对蚯蚓的毒性是相似的。

16 lawsuit   

n.诉讼，控诉

参考例句：

• They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
• He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。

17 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

18 skeptical   

adj.怀疑的，多疑的

参考例句：

• Others here are more skeptical about the chances for justice being done.这里的其他人更为怀疑正义能否得到伸张。
• Her look was skeptical and resigned.她的表情是将信将疑而又无可奈何。

19 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

20 benign   

adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的

参考例句：

• The benign weather brought North America a bumper crop.温和的气候给北美带来大丰收。
• Martha is a benign old lady.玛莎是个仁慈的老妇人。

21 irrigated   

[医]冲洗的

参考例句：

• They irrigated their crops with water from this river. 他们用这条小河里的水浇庄稼。
• A crop can be sown, weeded, irrigated, and fertilized uniformly. 一种作物可以均匀一致地进行播种，除草，灌溉和施肥。

22 conversion   

n.转化，转换，转变

参考例句：

• He underwent quite a conversion.他彻底变了。
• Waste conversion is a part of the production process.废物处理是生产过程的一个组成部分。

23 arsenic   

n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的

参考例句：

• His wife poisoned him with arsenic.他的妻子用砒霜把他毒死了。
• Arsenic is a poison.砒霜是毒药。

24 accusations   

n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名

参考例句：

• There were accusations of plagiarism. 曾有过关于剽窃的指控。
• He remained unruffled by their accusations. 对于他们的指控他处之泰然。

25 uproar   

n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸

参考例句：

• She could hear the uproar in the room.她能听见房间里的吵闹声。
• His remarks threw the audience into an uproar.他的讲话使听众沸腾起来。