Page 21 - Flathead Beacon // 1.13.16

WELLING CONCERNS
Testing reveals high levels of radioactive elements in drinking water west of Kalispell
BY TRISTAN SCOTT
The dull throbbing in Lisa Miller’s neck set in almost as soon as she and her fam- ily moved into their new log cabin home, perched in the idyllic granite hills near Kila, an unincor- porated community west of Kalispell.
Her daughter felt it, too, describ- ing the discomfort as like having marbles or rocks in her head – a cold, dizzying aura that grew more pro- nounced downstairs in the basement while washing laundry or running the utility sink.
“It became really clear to me that something in the environment was knocking me o my axis,” Lisa said. “I kept thinking, ‘It has to be some- thing in the house.’”
She never imagined that her drink- ing water might be radioactive.
“It certainly wasn’t the rst thing that came to mind,” she joked.
Lisa and her husband, Phil, tore out the old carpeting. They disinfected the entire house, scrubbed the walls and bought a top-of-the-line air puri- cation system, but nothing helped.
When the couple discovered mold inside the panels of the basement’s drop ceiling, they hired a remediation out t, believing it would nally solve the problem. But even after spending $4,000 on the cleanup, the throbbing pressure in the back of Lisa’s neck and head persisted.
“People thought I was crazy,” she said. “I just couldn’t understand it.”
During a visit to her chiropractor, Lisa learned that some of the private wells and public water systems in the granite-rich area west of Kalispell had historically registered high lev- els of naturally occurring radiological
activity. Her chiropractor suggested testing the home for radon. Sure enough, an inspection revealed unsafe levels of the radioactive gas indoors, so the Millers installed a radon mitigation system.
Still, Lisa continued to experience the aching, queasy discomfort when- ever she washed the laundry or ran the tap.
“I was just at my wit’s end,” she said.
At a neighborhood barbecue last July, Lisa conveyed her exasperation to a neighbor, who mentioned that the radon could be in the Millers’ drink- ing water, and that a number of pri- vate wells in the area contained ura- nium, including adjacent wells. Ura- nium decays to form radium, the neighbor explained, which decays to form radon.
“I left thinking, ‘Uranium? What in the world is uranium?’” Lisa recalled. The Millers would soon learn the answer to that question, but many
others were about to surface.
A month after the barbecue, the Millers received an analytical report showing that uranium, the stu of nuclear fuel for power plants and atom bombs, was present in the fam- ily’s drinking water at a level con- sidered unsafe by both federal and state standards. The report was omi- nously stamped “not potable without
treatment.”
“We were about four times above
the limit that the government recom- mends is safe,” she said.
Lisa and Phil began researching their next steps. If the couple and their ve children wanted to remain in their new home, they reasoned they
JANUARY 13, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
21