Two State Prisons Have Lead-Tainted Water

Inmate lawsuit alleges harm

Fox Lake Correctional Institution inmate Ryan Rozak has sued prison officials over the high lead and copper content in the water, claiming it has made him ill. The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Madison. Photo from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

Inmate Ryan Rozak insists the water at Fox Lake Correctional is making him sick. He is suing corrections officials in federal court, claiming they are violating the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Rozak blames the drinking water at the prison for diarrhea and other health problems. The water, he said, “messes up my body, bones, mind.”

Rozak recently got two court-appointed lawyers to represent him in his 2015 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Madison, with Judge James D. Peterson noting that the case presented “complex scientific public health issues.”

“We are treated like animals and forced to live in pain,” Rozak said in a handwritten amended complaint.

High levels of copper in water have been linked in adults to nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting. Exposure to very high levels can cause kidney and liver damage.

“Conditions of confinement” claims such as Rozak’s are based on the notion that “the state, when it puts people in prison, places them in potentially dangerous conditions while depriving them of the capacity to provide for their own care and protection,” then-Georgetown University visiting law professor Sharon Dolovich wrote in a 2009 New York University Law Review article.

Another Fox Lake inmate told the Center in a letter that he is concerned about using the prison’s water for cooking. Heating water can concentrate the harmful effects of lead, which in adults can include lowered immunity, kidney failure, gout, high blood pressure and nerve damage.

“Many times we need to let all the faucets run for hours trying to clear the water from brown to clear,” according to the inmate, who said he works in Fox Lake’s kitchen. “I worry about the pasta and rice we cook, as this must be cooked in our dirty water.”

Other Fox Lake inmates reported skin rashes, which they blame on water from the prison. Residents of Flint, Michigan, also reported skin rashes after that city switched to a highly corrosive water source that sent spikes of lead from pipes and fixtures into residents’ drinking water.

However, those rashes have not been scientifically tied to the increased lead levels. It is not known whether the rashes reported by Fox Lake inmates, including Joseph S. Cook, are similar to those afflicting Flint residents.

In a letter to the Center, Cook wrote that the water “is rough to the skin, causing bumps after showers.”

Lead, copper in water at Waupun

Drinking water samples from Waupun Correctional have exceeded the federal standard 10 times for lead and four times for copper since 2008, according to the DNR drinking water quality database.

Utilities — including the Fox Lake and Waupun prisons, which operate their own water systems — can have up to 10 percent of water samples test above maximum levels without violating the federal Lead and Copper Rule.

Former Fox Lake inmate James Morgan says the water at the prison was discolored so he drank bottled water purchased from the canteen. “There were certain occasions when you would turn the water on and there was obviously something wrong because the whole entire system would produce brown water.” Photo by Dee J. Hall of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Althoff said the “vast majority” of the 140 water samples taken since 2008 at Waupun have tested below the federal limits. The prison hit the 10 percent threshold in 2014, he said.

That year, Waupun was required to notify water consumers of the high lead levels, and the DOC provided a notice that it said was posted at the prison for inmates and emailed to staff in November 2014. The prison added phosphate to the water to prevent corrosion.

Brian Cunningham, who has worked as a correctional officer at Waupun for 22 years, said he has no recollection of being notified of excessive lead levels in 2014. Cunningham said he has always mistrusted the water at the prison, opened in the mid-1800s, so he brings his own. The prison limits the amount staff can bring in to two bottles no larger than 16 ounces each, he said.

In September, high concentrations were again detected at Waupun, including one sample that registered at 120 ppb — eight times the federal limit. Despite the high value, Althoff said the prison remains in compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule.

Cunningham, president of the Wisconsin Association for Correctional Law Enforcement, said the prison did notify staff of the high lead level last fall.

But, “Management did nothing else with it — no adjustments to ensuring that staff had water or could bring more water in — just a blank statement with nothing more after,” he said.

Added Cunningham: “Inmates have complained about the taste and the color of Waupun water since I’ve started working there.”

Wisconsin Public Radio reporter Gilman Halsted contributed to this report. Failure at the Faucet is the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s ongoing investigation of risks to Wisconsin’s drinking water. The nonprofit Center(www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

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