Judge: Texas Prison's Water Violates 'Standards of Decency'
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By JUAN A. LOZANO, ASSOCIATED PRESS HOUSTON — Jun 22, 2016, 5:42 PM ET
A group of prisoners alleging they have to drink arsenic-laden water to stay cool inside their hot Texas lockup won a legal victory Tuesday in an ongoing lawsuit after a federal judge ordered the Texas prison system to provide safe drinking water that doesn't violate "contemporary standards of decency."
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison has given the prison system 15 days to replace the water supply at the Wallace Pack Unit in Navasota, located about 70 miles northwest of Houston.
The judge's order came in a lawsuit the inmates filed in 2014 in Houston federal court alleging they're being exposed to dangerous heat at the unit. The lawsuit alleges Texas houses inmates in conditions that are inhumane enough to violate the U.S. Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The Pack Unit is a low security geriatric facility that houses about 1,400 inmates, many of whom are sick or disabled.
In his 15-page ruling, Ellison wrote the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has been "deliberately indifferent" to the ongoing risk inmates at the unit face from prolonged exposure to "extreme heat" and from having to drink arsenic-laden water in order to reduce the risk from the heat. The drinking water at the Pack Unit has contained between 2 and 4½ times the amount of arsenic permitted by the Environmental Protection Agency, the judge said.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judge-texas-prisons-water-violates-standards-decency-40054067
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