how the fed's let industry pollute the nation's underground water supply

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/poisoning-well-how-feds-let-industry-pollute-nation-s-underground-water-supply-1355676143



Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to pollute aquifers in more than 1,500 places across the country, releasing toxic material into underground reservoirs that help supply more than half of the nation's drinking water.

In many cases, the Environmental Protection Agency has granted these so-called aquifer exemptions in Western states now stricken by drought and increasingly desperate for water.

EPA records show that portions of at least 100 drinking water aquifers have been written off because exemptions have allowed them to be used as dumping grounds.

"You are sacrificing these aquifers," said Mark Williams, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado and a member of a National Science Foundation team studying the effects of energy development on the environment. "By definition, you are putting pollution into them. ... If you are looking 50 to 100 years down the road, this is not a good way to go."

[Nihil]

1. How can you just "allow" someone to deliberately dump toxic waste into an aquifer?

I mean, it's not as if you were authorizing the dumping of solid waste into the
shaft of an old mine or something and just crossing their fingers that it will stay.
Here, they are knowingly putting toxins into known freshwater aquifers in the
certain knowledge that, after doing so, that aquifer *cannot* be used.

Seriously, wtf?