Lawsuit Upholds Inmates' Request For Safe Drinking Water
By Peak Johnson
Earlier this month, four prisoners at Wallace Pack Unit in Navasota, TX, won an ongoing lawsuit alleging that they were being forced to consume arsenic-laden water to stay hydrated inside prison.
The lawsuit was filed in relation to unsafe drinking water, which was laden with unsafe levels of arsenic, up to 4.5 times more than that permitted by the U.S. EPA, and exposure to dangerous heat levels without air conditioning.
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison had given the prison system 15 days to replace the water supply at Wallace Pack, 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.
According to The Huffington Post, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said that it plans to appeal the ruling, with a spokesman saying a new filtration system has been designed and should be installed next year.
One of the attorneys for the inmates said that the prison system has “unacceptably known about the unsafe arsenic levels since 2006,” and inmates have made comments about the extreme conditions.
It is not the first set of complaints. The Huffington Post reported that at least 20 prisoners have died in non-air-conditioned Texas prisons from overheating since 1998, including 10 who died in 2011 alone.
For similar stories visit Water Online’s Drinking Water Regulations And Legislation Solutions Center.