WCP: "Stronghold residents want to make sure their water is safe"

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Stronghold Residents Want to Make Sure Their Water Is Safe

Posted by Perry Stein on Apr. 25, 2014 at 1:44 pm

                                                        

In the last three weeks, every household in the Stronghold neighborhood received a flier at their homes with some startling allegations: The rate of pancreatic cancer in the area is suspiciously high, and some residents suspect that it could be tied to their water supply.

                                                       

Laura Jackson, who has lived in the seven-square-block radius neighborhood that lies east of North Capitol Street and south of Michigan Avenue NE for more than two decades, says in the past 18 months, four Stronghold residents have died from pancreatic cancer. As she and other residents started handing out fliers and talking to neighbors about this, she says they discovered two more people in the area with pancreas-related illnesses.

                                                      

Jackson and some of her neighbors started researching and learned that the National Cancer Institute estimates that an average of 80 people died per year between 2006 and 2010 from pancreatic cancer in all of D.C. According to 2010 census data, 457 resident live in Stronghold. If 80 out of the approximately 601,000 residents counted in D.C. in the 2010 census die from the cancer each year, the neighborhood should only have one death every 16 years or so. (That is assuming, of course, that each resident and each demographic has an equal chance of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which may not be true.) The people who died in Stronghold ranged in age from their 50s to 80s, according to Jackson.       

  

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Residents also contacted Ward 5 D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, a longtime Stronghold resident who says he personally knows two of the residents who recently died from pancreatic cancer. While he says he's contacting the necessary agencies and working to ensure that his constituents' concerns are addressed, he's confident that DC Water has effectively and routinely tested the water for chemicals. It is, after all, the same water he has at his own house.

                       

"Anytime you hear claims like the ones from the residents in Stronghold, I think we should take them seriously," McDuffie says. "The chief priority is to get the community answers."

           

DC Water's Lisle says that if anyone is concerned, they can call customer service at (202) 354-3600 and ask to have their drinking water tested for free.