Reynolds Water Conditioning

  In Oldsmar, Florida, a city of 15,000 people in the Tampa Bay area, a hacker remotely accessed the water treatment plant and adjusted the lye levels in the city’s drinking water, raising it to more than 100 times the normal level. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said, “It’s a bad act. It’s a bad actor. It’s not just a little chlorine, or a little fluoride – you’re basically talking about lye.” A remote access software program called TeamViewer was used to infiltrate the water treatment facility. The intruder entered the system twice: 8 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. It is unclear whether the hacker entered the system by the use of a password, though it is required to use the system remotely, according to the assistant city manager Felicia Donnelly. The hacker’s efforts were immediately caught by the system’s operator, who reduced the levels within the system. No significant changes were noted in the city’s water supply; the public was never in danger. The intrusion lasted between...

  In 2008, the Associated Press (AP) conducted a five-month investigation and published a three-part series documenting a wide array of pharmaceuticals (antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers, and sex hormones) that were present in the drinking water of at least 41 million Americans. The concentrations were minuscule but left scientists concerned. How do pharmaceuticals end up in our water? When people take medicine, some gets absorbed by the body; what doesn’t gets flushed out through our urinary tract, ending up in our sewage systems. Moreover, leftover drugs are oftentimes flushed down the toilet in full-form and eventually into our water supply. Treatment facilities are not required to test for pharmaceuticals or filter them out. The AP National Investigative Team sorted through hundreds of scientific reports, meticulously filtered through federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants, interviewing over 230 officials, sci...