Inmates Forced To Drink Arsenic-Laden Water Win Lawsuit
By Peak Johnson
In Houston, TX, a group of inmates recently won an ongoing lawsuit alleging that they were being forced to consume arsenic-laden water to stay hydrated inside prison.
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison gave the prison system 15 days to replace the water supply at the Wallace Pack Unit in Navasota, located about 70 miles northwest of Houston, according to the Associated Press in a story published by Fox News.
The inmates had filed the lawsuit back in 2014 in Houston federal court, stating that they were “being exposed to dangerous heat at the unit.” The lawsuit stated that Texas houses inmates in conditions that were “inhumane enough” to violate the U.S. Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The prisoners had "demonstrated that (the prison system's) current and ongoing conduct violates contemporary standards of decency," Ellison wrote in his 15-page ruling.
Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), said the agency plans to appeal the ruling.
TheEagle.com reported that Clark said the federal government's standards regarding arsenic have changed "significantly" over the past 10 years.
The U.S. EPA lowered the acceptable levels of arsenic in drinking water from 50 ppb to 10 ppb. Clark said that TDCJ installed a new water filtration system at the Pack Unit shortly after the change, which lowered the levels but did not fully satisfy the new federal requirement.
"The water at the Pack Unit is safe to drink according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Department of State Health Services," Clark said in a prepared statement to the Houston Chronicle. "Although this is not an emergency and the water is safe to drink, we have designed a new filtration system which has been approved by TCEQ, and the final installation is expected in early 2017."
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