LEWISTON, Minn. – The League of Women Voters invited citizens concerned about Lewiston drinking water quality to a forum the League has titled “A Resource in Crisis.” Time: 6 p.m., Monday, at the  Lewiston Community Center, 75 Rice Street. The program is in response to recent well-testing programs that confirmed significant nitrate contamination in rural drinking water. Sponsors: Minnesota Well Owners Organization, /Winona Will Dilg Chapter of the Izaak Walton League, Trout Unlimited and the Land Stewardship Project. Speakers will address how karst topography affects private wells, impaired municipal water sources, water contamination, and human health, and links between clean water and the Winona County economy.

Contamination levels

The Environmental Working Group had these findings in Lewiston drinking water in 2021:

Arsenic:  560 times the EWG guide of 2.24 units but within the legal limit 10 units.

Radium: 99 times the EWG guide of 4.96 units but with the legal 5 units.

Nitrate: 28 times more than the EWC guide of 3.93 units but within the legal 10 ppm.

Uranium: 2.8 times more than EWC guide of 1.21units but within the legal 20 units.

The Group criticizes thresholds for contamination as woefully low.

Environmental Working Group profile

The Environmental Working Group, founded in 1993 and based in Washington, is a nonprofit activist group that researches toxicity from government, corporate and agricultural  sources. Critics have called its reports “alarmist” and “scaremongering” and “misleading.” It is true that the group rating system is more severe than most government scales for hazardous contaminant levels, it nonetheless has been influential in changing local policies for safer drinking water.

Among speakers

> Paul Wotzka, hydrologist and Minnesota Well Owners Organization founder:  “Our Drinking Water Stinks and Our Trout Streams Are Sick.”

> Aleta Borrud, an epidemiology: “Do Dying Fish Tell Us Something about Risks from Our Drinking Water?”

> Monta Hayner, Guide with Driftless Fly Fishing: “The Importance of Clean Water to Recreation and Tourism.”

Lee Stoe, of Trout UnliMited:  “A Magical Day on Rush Creek.”

> Carly Griffith, of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy: “A Petition to Use Emergency Authority to Address the Drinking Water Crisis.”