In early September 2001, the Pascoag Utility District (PUD), water supplier to approximately 1200 households in the northern Rhode Island village of Pascoag, announced that the village's public drinking water supply was contaminated with the gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE). What followed was more than four months during which Pascoag residents were advised not to drink or cook with the water, and to sponge-bathe young children and use adequate ventilation when showering.

This project began as a class project at Brown University for ES 126: Public Perception of the Environment. It has been expanded in summer research and research during the 2002-2003 academic year.

Why study the Pascoag water contamination?

• According to statistics from HEALTH, as of July 2002 there were 389,858 Rhode Island residents served by water systems with known underground storage tanks located within half a mile of the well.
• There are only 31 major public water supply districts out of over 400 water suppliers in Rhode Island. This means that there is a very large number of small, vulnerable water supplies.
• MTBE is pervasive in the environment, and has contaminated or threatened water supplies across the country.
• Understanding interactions between residents and officials in unexpected situations are important to designing appropriate public policy and interventions in the future.

The goals of this project are:

• to understand the perceptions and experiences of Pascoag residents to the contamination
• to understand how officials perceived their roles and responsibilities in dealing with the situation
• to understand how the different parties involved communicated with each other and to identify areas of disconnect
• to develop draft recommendations for programmatic, regulatory and legislative changes to improve local and state response to such events

In the words of one state official, the next contamination event is not a question of "if" but of "when". The goal of this project is to help the state prepare for that eventuality.

Center for Environmental Studies Brown University Box 1943 Providence, RI 02912 site map last modified: October 15, 2002