Why Erin Brockovich called a Mount Pleasant drinking water press conference ‘crap’

In the wake of a controversy over possible contamination in Mount Pleasant’s drinking water, Erin Brockovich, a high-profile environmental advocate, has weighed in on the Charleston area conversation.

About two weeks ago, a group of Mount Pleasant parents began to question a perceived uptick in brain cancer in the area. Officials at the state health department, however, said there is no cancer cluster, according to the Charleston Post and Courier.

Residents worry the cancers were caused by pesticides in the drinking water and some claimed that testing kits they bought online returned a positive result for pesticides, according to the Post and Courier.

Clay Duffie, general manager of Mount Pleasant Waterworks, explained during a press conference Sunday the importance of the Middendorf aquifer, a below-ground drinking water source serving Mount Pleasant. Duffie said the aquifer is 2,000 feet deep and “protected from any kind of surface water and man-made contaminants,” the newspaper reported.

On Monday, water system managers assured residents that those contaminants were never found in the drinking water. But many remain skeptical.

Brockovich, whose story of uncovering a toxic chemical in the drinking water of Hinkley, Calif., was made famous in an Oscar-winning movie starring Julia Roberts, posted on Facebook asking for more information about the water in Mount Pleasant and calling Sunday’s press conference “crap”.

“The City of Mount Pleasant buys so much water from Charleston ... several months out of the year they actually inject the severely contaminated excess surface water into Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) wells,” she wrote in a Facebook post Monday evening.

Duffie told the Post and Courier that is “a misrepresentation of what we do.”

On Wednesday, Brockovich took back to Facebook to “set the record straight and respond to further explain” her position.

“I think the City of Charleston and Mount Pleasant Waterworks are good operations. I think there is a huge gap in communication between them and that needs to be fixed,” she wrote. “Saying Drinking Water is “Safe” without any supporting documentation is wrong. Resting on the comfort that the DHEC and the USEPA are there to give you cover is the same mistake the City of Flint made.”

DHEC and both area water systems have promised to conduct additional pesticide tests this week.

Jeffrey Taillon, spokesman for DHEC, told the Post and Courier that a series of eight samples would be collected and shipped to a certified laboratory to be analyzed.

This story was originally published July 13, 2017 at 9:25 AM with the headline "Why Erin Brockovich called a Mount Pleasant drinking water press conference ‘crap’."