The rally flyer for Feb 4 that you should be printing off and mailing to prisoners is located here

www.1union1.com/Feb4_rally_flyer_plata.html

UNION members, do you remember when the water at Salinas Valley Prison was also deemed poison? We took action and was able to get bottled water brought in for the prisoners, even though they would only give them very limited amounts of it, depending on the size of cup that they had, sometimes only 8 ounces per day.

Giving the prisoners water laced with arsenic is murder.

We need to reach the families of prisoners at Kern Valley State and teach them how to file complaints with the Grand Jury and respond to the Los Angeles Times Reporter Michael Rothfeld's appeal for reports on this situation. It is rare to have the LA Times so involved and looking for information. The ignorance and apathy amongst the family members must not be allowed to rule over this situation. We need to seize this day because lives hang in the balance here in this situation.

If we sit quietly, than the murder via poison water will continue unabated.

The complaints to the editors, 100 words or less for the LA Times, can come from any one, but the complaints to the Grand Jury must come from the family members. Prisoners do not hold the same influence as their family members, but the pdf form to file many complaints (at least 100 with the Grand Jury) will prompt some action.

They are talking about moving Eric to this prison, it will be his eighth move in five years, for no reason other than the warden does not want the son of a journalist and activist taking his operations public. It is against the law to move anyone around as if they are a "hot potato" but every effort is being made to stop our lawsuits and discredit him. The legislature is occupied and owned by law enforcement labor unions, there is no help available for any prisoner from them. Is Kern Valley State Prison a place where they are sending inmates to be murdered by arsenic?

Mark Grangetto was here for some time.

I believe that the water needs to be tested at all state prisons. It has been only a couple of months since H-pylori was found in the water at Norco.

You are the public outcry that is needed here in this situation that is one of life and death for thousands of prisoners.

You cannot post directly beneath this article to tell the families of those at Kern Valley State Prison what to do - file complaints with the Kern County Grand Jury and contact Michael Rothfeld of the Los Angeles Times, as well as subscribe to the UNION newsletter. We need to raise hell over this MURDER. Wardens can be sued and what I see here is a lawsuit, although I cannot give legal advice, this appears to me to be a lawsuit.

Call the warden and blast him for this. He denied the 602 to give remedy for arsenic in the water!!!! He is no better than the worst mentally killer on death row to participate in this.

Anthony Hedgpeth, Warden, Kern Valley State Prison

(661) 721-6300

Rev. Cayenne

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arsenic29-2008dec29,0,1275193,full.story

From the Los Angeles Times

Arsenic levels too high in Kern Valley State Prison's drinking water

Three years past deadline, California has no solid plan to reduce the arsenic, which has been linked to cancer. Officials spent money to design a filtration plant and then decided not to build it.

By Michael Rothfeld

December 29, 2008

Reporting from Delano — Beside a field of rolling tumbleweed in this remote Central Valley town, the state opened its newest prison in 2005 with a modern design, cutting-edge security features and a serious environmental problem.

The drinking water pumped from two wells at Kern Valley State Prison contained arsenic, a known cause of cancer, in amounts far higher than a federal safety standard soon to take effect.

Yet today, nearly three years after missing the government's deadline to reduce the arsenic levels, the state has no concrete plans or funding to do so. Officials spent $629,000 to design a filtration system and then decided not to build it, while neglecting to inform staff and inmates that they were consuming contaminated water.

After the prison finally posted notices last April on orders from the state Department of Public Health, the inmates continued drinking the water, under protest.

"We have no choice," said Larry Tillman, 38, who was serving time for burglary. "We should at the very least receive bottled water, or truck in water from another city."

Most correctional officers at Kern Valley State Prison take bottled water to work -- some say they prefer it anyway -- but administrators created a form letter to reject requests for alternative water from some of the 4,800 inmates. The administrators say the health hazard from arsenic, a chemical used in industry and farming, is insignificant, and they promise to filter the water some time in the next few years.

"It's not that major of an issue," said Kelly Harrington, the prison's new warden.

But long-term exposure to arsenic, common in Central Valley communities, has been linked to cancer of the lungs, skin, kidneys, liver and bladder and to other maladies.

The situation, critics say, is emblematic of the short-sighted planning and creeping pace of the mammoth prison bureaucracy as it struggles to house 170,000 of California's most undesired residents.

The state has placed many of its lockups far from major cities, in rural areas with nothing as far as the eye can see, where they are embraced by residents desperate for jobs and commerce. But officials have sometimes ignored health threats endemic to these regions.

Between 1987 and 1994, the state built four prisons in a part of the Central Valley known as a hotbed of valley fever, a sometimes severe infection that usually affects the lungs. Health experts estimate that the state has spent millions to treat inmates for the disease, spawned by a fungus in desert soil.

In 2007, the year after five inmates died from valley fever, the state proposed expanding five prisons in the Central Valley but later backed off on two of the sites. One proposed expansion site, Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, had an outbreak that sickened 520 prisoners in 2006. A Fresno County grand jury concluded last year that the prison, built in 1994, should not have been put there.

At the California Institution for Women in Chino, the state has been buying bottled water for prisoners for five years -- at a current annual cost of $480,000 -- because of nitrate levels that violate federal standards in the water supply to the facility and to the nearby California Institution for Men. Nitrates, which are chemical compounds that often get into soil from fertilizer and manure, can cause a blood disorder in fetuses and infants.

Chino-area municipalities have built systems to filter their own water, and the state hopes to complete a similar project a year from now for both the women's and men's prisons. But Chino Mayor Dennis Yates, who says sewage from the men's prison has long polluted the Santa Ana River, is skeptical of state officials' competence.

"Even if you do give them money, they don't do anything," Yates said. "It's just a huge, bloated bureaucracy."

In 2001, four years before Kern Valley prison opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered a reduction in the maximum level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10. Water suppliers had until Jan. 23, 2006, to meet the new standard. Recent testing has shown the arsenic level in one prison well at 23 parts per billion and the other at 15.

One day this month, in a low-slung white building with blue doors known as Facility C, prisoners bunking in a crowded gymnasium drank from the water fountain and used water from the sinks to make their soup. Some newcomers said they had not been told about the contamination upon arrival at the prison.

"I just came from an institution where the water was just atrocious, definitely foul," said Ramon Diaz, 25, who had three years remaining on a sentence for drug dealing. "This to me is like spring water here, and you come to find out that it's not the way it should be, either."

Corrections Department officials said they could not explain why a filtration system was not included in the prison's design because most of the employees who worked on it had since left. Later, the agency developed plans to add a filtration plant. It obtained $2.5 million from lawmakers for that purpose in 2006.

But planners abandoned the idea, electing instead to incorporate the project into an overall prison expansion approved by lawmakers. Flaws in the legislation have postponed the expansion indefinitely.

State project manager Gary Lewis said the filtration plant is in the "conceptual study phase."

This year the EPA has ordered 11 California water systems to reduce excessive arsenic levels. One was the city of Delano, which serves the North Kern State Prison, a few miles from Kern Valley prison. On Dec. 12, after inquiries by The Times, the state public health department ordered Kern Valley State Prison to come up with a plan by February to comply with the arsenic law.

The prison's chief medical officer, Dr. Sherry Lopez, said there was no immediate danger from the lockup's water, based on an e-mail she received in April from a poison-control expert who said arsenic is "much more a regulatory problem than a public health problem."

"It kind of reassured me and everybody else here that everything is OK," Lopez said.

But Dr. Gina Solomon, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said that the law is important and that disempowered populations, such as prisoners and poor rural workers, often suffer because of lax enforcement.

"The standard was set for a reason, and the reason is that arsenic is known to cause cancer in humans," she said. "So the clock is ticking. The longer that people are drinking the water, the higher the risk."

Many of Kern Valley's prisoners are serving life terms, but even those with shorter stints are worried.

"It's definitely a concern for us if there's an abundance of arsenic in the water and we're ingesting that," said Dylan Littlefield, 36, an inmate from Hollywood with five years remaining for attempted robbery and drug dealing. "Who knows if we're going to be treated properly?"

The healthcare system in the state's prisons has been turned over to a federal receiver by a judge who said substandard treatment has caused many needless deaths behind bars. The receiver, J. Clark Kelso, was not alerted to the arsenic problem by the state, his top aide said.

"We're concerned about the potential health risks and we have to look into it," said John Hagar, the receiver's chief of staff. "Constructing facilities that are inadequate from the beginning is unfortunately part of a long-standing trend with the Department of Corrections, so I'm not surprised."

michael.rothfeld@latimes.com

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http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2008-12/44152908.PDF

The notice of high arsenic levels is here

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rothfeld-form,0,7378086.special

Contact the reporter with your experiences

Times reporter Michael Rothfeld invites you to share your personal experiences related to this article.