About information:
"There was a severe lack of information from the government."

"There should have been more updates, something to let us know that we weren't alone, that they cared."

"[We had a]. . . feeling of helplessness, mistrust, and lack of control."

"This is a small town. Nothing is published in, say, The Providence Journal. If you didn't go to meetings, you had no clue, unless you heard from word of mouth."

"Supposedly they notified people. But let me tell you, they didn't notify a lot of us."

About water use:
"I don't know what it's going to do to me, or my wife, or the other residents of Pascoag. It's kind of in the back of my mind all the time."

"We shut off our water and duct-taped our faucets shut."

"We used 22 gallons of water for Thanksgiving dinner. It's hard to do everyday things. They only gave us 12 gallons of water a week. Dinner alone takes at least 1 gallon."

"In mid December when the filters were installed, we tried using the toilet and washing machine again with the town water. Massive headaches, vomiting and wheezing returned. I cried. It was the day after my birthday."

"I'll never let [my child] drink the water ever again."

About their community:
"I now realize the importance of being involved in your local government."

"People look at it like it's a contaminated town."

We're the town with the gas in the water.

"[The contamination] put us on the map in a negative way.

"I hate my house now. I don't feel it is a home anymore."

About officials:
"No action is the worst action. Complacency and no response is the worst thing you can do."

"I really just don't know who to blame. I'm blaming someone for making me sick."

"They kept the wells running. . .there's poison coming out of the wells. . .why keep them running?"

"Governor Almond was negligent in his duties to be a leader in a crisis situation. He shouldn't even have been paid for all those months."

"The governor prevented us from getting help. He treated us like cattle that weren't worth talking to."

"[Governor Almond was] useless. . .impervious to our needs and concerns. He never came to visit. I was completely unimpressed. Basically, I was disgusted with him."

"[HEALTH] made it well known that if you had a health concern, you could call them."

"I was point-blank lied to. The day I had to go to the doctors with burnt lips I called the Health Department and the Pascoag water district. I had huge blisters on my lips... couldn't eat or drink for weeks. . .and they said it was safe to shower no matter what. They took my name to get back to me and it never happened."

"It just seemed like nobody was listening"

". . .we were on our own."

"I mean they weren't concerned, as if we didn't mean anything to them. I don't think we're even on the map, that they knew Pascoag even existed."

"We felt like we weren't an important town in the state. We felt like we didn't even live in the state, we weren't part of the state, that's how bad it was. Totally ignored."

"We weren't a big enough town to justify a state of emergency! All [the governor] had to do was ask, and the Feds would have come in! It pisses me off."

"I just feel the north-west corner of the state is always left out. I'm sure if it was Lincoln something would have been done."

"The big shots in Providence don't care about us--we're a hick town."

"They think of us as blue-collar workers. I'm frustrated that the government puts us down."

About the Main St. Mobil station:
"People that lived right around there knew that they were leaking. You could smell it in the street when you picketed. And we had to watch these tankers of Mobil oil fill these leaking systems and further pollute our water for another 2 or 3 weeks before anything happened."