Chasidy Hobbs, Coastkeeper talks about our water

Chasidy Hobbs is the newest coastkeeper for Emerald Coastkeeper, which is the local chapter of the Waterkeeper Alliance. She is also an instructor and advisor at the University of West Florida.

Waterkeeper Alliance is an international non-profit group dedicated to monitoring bodies of water.

“Our jurisdiction is from Perdido Bay by the Alabama line to East Bay by Panama City,” Hobbs said. “We work predominantly in Escambia County because that’s where our headquarters are.”

She had hoped her first major project to fight against would be the off-shore drilling issue affecting the state of Florida, but before she could even touch that issue, the Environmental Working Group water report came out.

The EWG rated Pensacola’s water number 100 in the list of 100 water utilities in the United States. That meant that Pensacola’s water was the worst water in the U.S.

EWG is a non-profit organization based out of Washington, D.C. They collected data from water companies throughout 45 states and the District of Columbia.

“EWG rated big city water utilities based on three factors: the total number of chemicals detected since 2004; the percentage of chemicals found of those tested; and the highest average level for an individual pollutant, relative to legal limits or national average amounts, including for the most common pollutants,” according to the EWG report.

Hobbs is planning a panel discussion to be held on February 10th at Pensacola Junior College to discuss how to regulate the water. Some issues that they will discuss will include the use of a water filter and what can actually be removed by these filters.

“Well I’m curious just what can be removed with a filter,” Hobbs said. “I know radium isn’t coming out, that’s one that cannot be filtered out.”

There are over 60,000 chemicals found in the water around the U.S but less than 100 of those are regulated by the government. According to the EWG report, there were 45 pollutants found in Pensacola’s water and of those 45, 21 of them exceeded health guidelines.

For more information on Emerald Coastkeeper visit their website at www.emeraldcoastkeeper.org and for more information on the EWG report visit www.ewg.org.