EXCLUSIVE: Is Dallas’ Water Department Wasting Money And Harming Public Health?
Recently obtained documents are making citizens wonder if the city is damaging the health of its citizens at considerable cost to taxpayers and without clear relative benefit.
*This is a syndication of Kellen Mccgovern Jones’ original reporting in The Dallas Express*
Documents exclusively obtained by The Dallas Express raise questions about public health and financial waste in the Dallas water department.
Adding hydrofluosilicic acid (HFS) is one of the most commonly used methods for treating drinking water with fluoride in the United States. However, the water department appears to consistently inject more HFS into the water than the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says is necessary to ostensibly protect public health. This action is taken at considerable taxpayer expense.
“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends a level of 0.7 milligrams per Liter (mg/L) of fluoride in your drinking water,” the CDC website says. “This is the level that prevents tooth decay and promotes good oral health.”
The water department’s Fluoride Analysis doc reveals that fluoride naturally occurs in Dallas’s water system at levels around .3 or .6 mg/L, depending on the day and treatment plant. The department then injects HFS into the tap water to reach the recommended HHS levels. However, on 12 occasions in March 2024, naturally occurring fluoride levels were at or above those recommended by HHS. Still, the East Side Water Treatment Plant added more. On two of these occasions, the fluoride levels were brought from roughly .9 to 1.09 mg/L.
On one occasion, in August, levels were raised from 0.24 to 1.28 mg/l at the Bachman Water Treatment Plant (BWTP).
This brings some of Dallas’s drinking water close to the 1.5 mg/l limit that the WHO says is acceptable for drinking water.
While HHS and WHO figures would indicate that Dallas’s tap water is safe, recent revelations about the supposed safety of consuming fluoride bring that notion into question.
A federal court recently ordered the EPA to take regulatory action against water fluoridation because of concerns about public health. In late September, Judge Edward M. Chen of the Northern District of California found that water fluoridation posed an “unreasonable risk” to human health, DX reported.
“The issue before this Court is whether the Plaintiffs have established by a preponderance of the evidence that the fluoridation of drinking water at levels typical in the United States poses an unreasonable risk of injury to the health of the public within the meaning of Amended [Toxic Substances Control Act],” the federal judge said.
“For the reasons set forth below, the Court so finds. Specifically, the Court finds that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter (“mg/L”) – the level presently considered ‘optimal’ in the United States – poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children. … the Court finds there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response. … One thing the EPA cannot do, however, in the face of this Court’s finding, is to ignore that risk,” he explained.
The Dallas Express previously reported that the reference to child IQs was based on the shocking revelations in the bombshell report released by the National Toxicology Program just before the court’s order.
“… 18 [high-quality studies] reported an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children,” the report’s abstract, known as NTP MGRAPH-08 stated. NTP MGRAPH-08 elaborated by saying that with moderate and low confidence, the second and third highest degrees of confidence out of five, there was a credibly sourced and plausible negative connection between childhood fluoride consumption and IQs in children.
After the report was published, local anti-fluoride activists such as Regina Imburgia urged the Dallas City Council to act immediately and not wait for the EPA to severely reduce or ban water fluoridation in compliance with the court order. However, neither the council nor any other government official has taken action as of this writing.
Fluoride was first added to tap water and dental products, such as toothpaste, in the 1940s and 50s at the urging of federal health agencies because some scientists believed it prevented “dental caries,” commonly known as “cavities.”
Proponents of water fluoridation frequently point to a 2001 study that found $38 is saved for every $1 a government body spent on fluoridation. This study was conducted by Susan Griffin, an economist working for the CDC. Griffin’s message resembled the attitude of the CDC’s website, which stated that the “CDC named fluoridation of drinking water one of 10 great public health interventions of the 20th century because of the dramatic decline in cavities since community water fluoridation started in 1945.”
However, this study did not examine the social and economic costs of diminished IQ because of water fluoridation. Likewise, it did not comprehensively examine the total cost of purchasing HFS, equipment, documentation, compliance, personnel, and other costs associated with municipal water fluoridation.
The City of Dallas’s October 2023 Quality of Life Fluoridation Presentation says “Dallas spends approximately $500,000 annually to fluoridate water for 2.6 million consumers.
Despite the amount of taxpayer dollars the city is spending to implement a water fluoridation program, the records do not build confidence that the program is being executed effectively, even if fluoridation protects human health.
All three plants have periodic issues with maintaining consistent levels of water fluoridation. Records indicate that these problems occur throughout the year and sometimes for several days at a time. The Elm Fork Water Treatment Plan went offline for seven days in April, and when it came back on, it failed to raise fluoridation levels to approximately 0.7 mg/l.
On two occasions in August, the naturally occurring fluoride level was .23, and the East Side Water Treatment Plant apparently did not take any action to elevate those levels substantially. For four days in late October and early November, ESWTP was unable to raise its fluoride level above .54 despite substantial injections of HSF. There was a similar issue at Bachman during the same period as well, although that plant typically has relatively fewer issues when it comes to hitting optimum fluoridation levels and going offline.
These examples are not the only instances of the various plants either over- or under-shooting recommended fluoride levels: these issues were consistently observed in at least one plant for one or more days across the 11 months in 2024 for which The Dallas Express had records.
DX contacted Director Sarah Standifer of Dallas Water Utilities for comment. The City Public Information officer responded on her behalf. He assured DX that, “Dallas strives to maintain fluoride levels within a tolerance range of ±0.2 mg/L, targeting an operating range of 0.5 to 0.9 mg/L. Our staff monitors and adjusts fluoride levels at each plant, taking into account the specific natural fluoride content of the raw water and operational factors. As a result, it’s expected that the amount of fluoride added may vary between plants to achieve the target range.”
He added that, “Dallas is closely monitoring developments and awaiting guidance from the EPA on any necessary actions.”
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Thank you for bringing this to the public’s attention. Hopefully, this problem will be fixed, with the coming administration, not just for Dallas and Texas, but for the whole country. What price have we and our children paid because of this chemical? Enough is enough!