Could our enemies poison the water supply?

The news reports below set me thinking, I'm not a chemist or biologist but does anybody know if harmful chemical or bio stuff exists that can be put in our drinking water, or is it just in the realms of sci-fi?

 

I don’t think it’s especially realistic as a practical terroristic attack. It’d be very difficult to have any significant impact on a large scale modern water system with a chemical or biological agent. The volumes involved meaning it would take a large amount of contamination to overcome the dilution and the systems of checks and cleaning would identify something very quickly. The example of natural bacterial contamination you quote would have been very minor and highly unlikely to cause significant harm to most people, the measures taken were just applying extreme caution while the issue was resolved (which I believe it was relatively quickly).

I suspect the biggest terrorist threat in this area would be more about fear as actual impact. Terrorists don’t actually need to put anything in the water, they just need to make people believe they have and let rampant paranoia and imagination do the work. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why some of the stories about this kind of plan comes out and why we should give them the contempt they deserve.

 

well if the poison was lead, it seems many would not even notice or care

our water should be regularly tested and reported on a web site for the public to view

 

Maybe it already is? Did you check? Apparently it is here in the UK, though I doubt very many people know or care about it.

 

That already happens. I don't know how widespread the online reporting is, but the testing is very widespread.

Here in my town, it's tested regularly and the results published annually both online and in the city newsletter.
https://eminnetonka.com/tap-water/tap-water-quality

In terms of "could this happen", HonestJoe has it right. The amount of poison you'd have to add is huge. Further, adding poison to the reservoir would first kill a whole bunch of fish, which people would notice. Then the toxin would have to make it through the testing/screening/filtering process used by NYC without triggering any alarms.

Adding bacteria might work better, but again cities tend to treat for that sort of thing. And you'd still need a whole bunch of it.

And last but not least, nobody in NYC drinks the tap water anyway.

 

Oh, and that first story referenced in the OP is a piece of anti-Muslim dreck.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/1...sted-after-group-seven-found-trespassing.html

Seven foreign students who study water treatment trespassed near the reservoir. There was no evidence of any sort that they were doing anything suspicious. There was no threat to the water supply. There is nothing in their backgrounds to suggest terrorist ties. All they did was park near one of the reservoirs entrances after hours, then walk down to the edge of the water to check out the reservoir. OMG!! Why, nobody has ever done such a thing anywhere else ever!

Had these been white or Christian, it wouldn't have made the papers. But thanks to hysteria and Islamaphobia, it was publicized far and wide.

Never mind that the reservoir in question holds 412 BILLION gallons of water, and that, like most reservoirs, is just a lake. It is open to the public for boating, and the grounds around it are open to hikers during regular hours. So accessing the reservoir is easy and legal. Thus it doesn't even make SENSE to be paranoid about this. But racism and Islamophobia rarely make sense.

 

OP...dunno. I think if they could, they would happily poison us by any means possible. But I do not know the practicality of doing it.

In any case, the tap water in the US is already pretty filthy stuff for the most part. I read many of the municipalities that get water from big rivers are drinking recycled pee and poop - for the sewage drains are in the same river as the drinking water inlet.

https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/6035/

 

in our town it is as well and then send a report in mail occasionally, but should be everywhere

 

That's a pretty non-persuasive test. What is the residue made of? I expect water to have particulates in it, even the cleanest, freshest spring water. What matters is not the presence of particulates, but what they consist of.

Further, there are plenty of nasty things that wouldn't leave a residue at all -- like bacteria and various toxins. "Clear residue" does not mean the water is clean, or healthy.

The quality of tap water depends on the specific municipality you are in, and on both its source of water and its treatment process.

In Minneapolis/St. Paul, they get their drinking water from the Mississippi River. The intakes are upriver of the cities, and the water is treated to drinking-water quality before reaching your tap. The treated sewage is discharged back into the river downriver of the cities.

Sounds disgusting, right? Except that properly-treated sewage is cleaner than tap water.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/...-water-getting-past-the-yuck-factor.html?_r=0

Why is that? Thanks to the EPA, which regulates wastewater treatment effluents. You know, that agency that Trump wants to cut by 31%.
https://www.epa.gov/eg/centralized-waste-treatment-effluent-guidelines

 

Be afraid! BE VERY AFRAID!
THAT is why our so-called president, in his infinite wisdom, has proposed a massive increase in military spending - and cuts in everything else in his budget proposal.
Because - that will help this threat... how?

 

Trump didn't increase military spending to stop someone from poisoning the water. You must get your news from CNN or MSNBC.

 

I am sorry you cannot grasp the concept of sarcasm.

 

You were being sarcastic about military spending...which was the point of your post? So what you're saying is, you're fine with military spending since it has nothing to do with the OP?
You don't understand how sarcasm works. We get that you were trying to say that Americans are overeating about threats like this and it probably won't happen. But military spending is completely irrelevant to that.

Glad I could help clear up your confusion.

 

One more time.
I realize military spending is irrelevant to such threats.
THAT WAS MY POINT.
The so-called president is increasing the military - from already insane levels - while cutting everything else.
The OP is pointing out a threat that is more real than anything we would need an even bigger military for, but funding for any agency that could address such a threat will be cut to feed a military already ahead of the rest of the world.
If you can't get it now, I give up.

 

Increasing military spending from the massive decrease we had. We lost units. My support company was dismantled. The state of Virginia now only has one MP company for the ENTIRE state.

He's restoring the military, not increasing it. Obama did his best to screw the military, Trump is just making us great again

 

It is certainly possible, but the effects would be shortlived and isolated. You might be able to contaminate a river or a lake with a chemical spill quantity of contaminate not readily taken out in normal treatment, but you are not going to be affecting that wide of an area or for very long in most places because we have such an abundance of water and water infrastructure in the US. Rivers are especially hard to hold concentration in because of the influx of water from upstream diluting and moving the pollutants downstream.

 

Here is the modern history of defense spending:



We've had more military spending under Obama than under Reagan.

The big spike in the middle is war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan. The decline reflects our winding down of our war there. That is a GOOD thing; it doesn't represent neglect of the military.

Overall, there is no data to support the idea that Obama slashed military spending.

 

We already outspend the next 7-8 countries COMBINED, and several of those are our allies.

Figures you'd be an MP.
I hated MPs.

 

We've had more units disband under Obama though. Military spending went up for one purpose for Obama.

DRONES

Once again, the entire state of VA now only has ONE MP company with the 266th now shutting down because of his personnel cuts.

You are comparing apples to microwaves

 

I'm not an MP

My older brother was formally the XO for that unit.

I too can't stand MPs

 

Thanks to the sequester budget, the military is having to cut back on total personnel. But that was a bipartisan decision of Congress, not Obama. Obama's White House -- with Congress' support -- proposed the sequester as a stick to get Congress to agree to something more rational. After all, there was no way Congress would let the sequester, with its mandated across-the-board cuts, kick in, right?

Wrong. Congress did exactly that. Unable to reach agreement on something that actually made sense, they let the sequester take effect.

Blaming Obama alone for that seems a little, uh, partisan. Especially because Obama made it very clear that he thought Congress would be stupid to let the sequester take effect.

 

Nope.

The reservoirs are simply holding areas for the water. Prior to being put into the system it is still run through a water filtration plant, where chlorine and other systems detect and kill any bacteria in the water. One of the reasons you detect a stronger chlorine smell in the water in the summer is because that is when bacteria are more common, so more is needed in the water to kill it off.

 

Figured. Thanks.

 

I'd take your word for it, but Obama's the same guy who changed the rules of engagement to where we had to wait for the enemy to shoot us first, before we were allowed to engage. So don't be surprised that we don't trust his feelings for us.

 

The ROEs are a tough thing. On the one hand, you don't want your troops fighting with both hands tied behind their back. On the other hand, too-loose rules lead to excessive civilian casualties -- which in a counter-insurgency can be self-defeating. It's a hard line to walk.

Were Obama's rules too restrictive? That's certainly possible.

Might the president have a strategic perspective that the troops on the ground can't see, and be making the correct decision based on that perspective? Also possible. That happens all the time to the guys on the ground: it looks to you like the orders you've been given are insane, when in fact they're in service to an objective you can't see from your location.

Since its their lives on the line, soldiers are famously impatient when their leaders put them at greater risk in order to reduce civilian casualties. But that doesn't make the desire to reduce such casualties an invalid or unimportant objective.

Over the years, I've seen examples of ROEs that certainly seem too restrictive. But it's not always clear to me, as a civilian sitting back home, if the problem is the ROE, or the interpretation of that ROE by the local commander, or just the sort of "fog of war" stuff that can happen in war, where split-second decisions are made using incomplete information.

For example, you would think that "car not heeding orders to stop" should be an open-shut case: If it doesn't stop, shoot it.

But after a few incidents in which a scared, innocent family is shot to death because they either misunderstood or panicked, you can understand why the military might want to find ways to avoid such shootings. Dead kids make for lousy PR.

And of course, the insurgents will try to find ways to exploit the ROEs. But they'll exploit it either way: Very loose ROEs? Maneuver U.S. troops into a scenario where they kill innocent civilians, creating a propaganda coup for the insurgents. Restrictive ROEs? See if they can take advantage of that to get close enough to U.S. troops to kill them.