Chromium-6 found in 31 water supplies

A new report released Monday says a suspected cancer-causing form of chromium is contaminating the water supply in at least 31 U.S. cities.
The report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found chromium-6, also known as hexavalent chromium, in the public water supplies of 89 percent of the cities it sampled.
Chromium-6 is the same chemical discovered by legal researcher Erin Brokovich in the water supply of Hinkley, California. That discovery led to the largest medical settlement in history paid by Pacific Gas and Electric.
The EWG report is the result of laboratory tests of tap water in 35 cities across the U.S. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires water utilities to test for total chromium, which includes chromium-3 or trivalent chromium, and chromium-6, but does not require tests specific for Chromium-6.
Chromium-3 is a naturally occurring chemical often found in runoff from surface disturbances such as construction, road building and mining. It is not thought to be carcinogenic. Chromium-6 can occur naturally in some geologies, but is typically the result of human activities. It is an ingredient in industrial lubricants and degreasers, and has been shown to cause intestinal tumors in laboratory animals in some studies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not yet made a definitive statement that chromium-6 causes cancer.
In my own community of Letcher County, Kentucky, hexavalent chromium was found in three streams during initial tests in 2005. Retesting in 2007 did not show hexavalent chromium, though chromium-3 was still present. The tests were conducted by Headwaters Inc., a nonprofit watershed group on whose board of directors I serve.
Tests on tap water for Letcher County were not immediately available.

Funeral services to be held for Gish

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. Monday, November 24, for Thomas E. Gish, the longtime editor of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg.

Tom and Pat Gish bought The Mountain Eagle in 1956, and took control of the paper in January 1957. Over the years, they endured harassment, boycotts and a fire bombing after taking on corrupt county and city governments, and mining interests.

Tom Gish died Friday after a long illness. He suffered heart failure on Tuesday, and had been in a coma ever since. Visitation will be at the Letcher Funeral Home in Whitesburg beginning at 5 p.m. Sunday. Funeral will be the following day at Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church in Whitesburg.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Ben Gish of Whitesburg and Ray Gish of Brooklyn, N.Y.; three daughters: Ann Gish of Virginia, Sarah Oakes of Thornton, and Dr. Katherine Gish of Bottom Fork; four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Crusading publisher who took on mining interests dead at 82

Tom Gish, the crusading editor and publisher of The Mountain Eagle and my first boss in the newspaper business, died today. He was 82.

Gish was Frankfort Bureau Chief for United Press International and his wife Pat was a reporter for the Lexington Leader when they bought The Mountain Eagle and moved back to Tom's native Letcher County. Leaving his pregnant wife in Central Kentucky until the baby was born, Tom took over the operations of the paper in January 1957, just in time for the worst flood in 30 years. Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed, and much of the paper's history was lost to the flood waters. Tom put the paper out by himself as water rushed by the foundations of the building, appealing for help for the county.

Under his leadership, The Mountain Eagle gained a reputation for taking on entrenched interests in Letcher County. Both Gishes were tireless advocates for the poor, for the environment, for education, and for ethics in public office. In the 1960s, the paper became one of the first to decry the abuses of strip mining and it was burned to the ground for its trouble in 1974. A Whitesburg police officer was convicted of procuring arson in the crime, but a local judge probated his sentence.

Over the years, reporters for the paper have been threatened, harassed, prosecuted and even beaten. When I went to work there in 1986, right out of college, Pat's advice was: "If anyone doesn't like what you've written, just smile, tell them you're sorry they feel that way and walk away." Tom's advice: "Tell them to go to hell."

He was among the members of the first state school board to be installed following the landmark KentuckyEducation Reform Act of 1990, and spent many days traveling to Frankfort and around Kentucky, helping to implement the reforms.

Gish has been in ill health for years, and suffered heart failure Tuesday night. He had been in a coma ever since.

His leadership will be missed.

A Spectator Crime

Sometimes a community buries a murder so deep that the people who live there forget what really happened, or even that anything happened at all.

Like Leonard Wood’s mutilated body, the facts surrounding his murder are buried so deeply that few people in Letcher County, Kentucky, know the atrocity took place. Even his name is not sure, with some reports calling him Leonard Wood and some calling him Leonard Woods. But Wood’s murder was so outrageous and his subsequent mutilation so horrendous that it made national news in a time when there was no television and precious little radio.

To find out more about Leonard Wood's murder, read my post on today's In Cold Blog.