Maui water is unsafe even with filters, one of the lessons learned from fires in California

The language is stark: People in torched areas of Maui should not try to filter their own drinking water because there is no “way to make it safe,” Maui County posted on its Instagram account this week. The state health department’s environmental health division told Maui County, which operates water delivery systems for most residents, to test for 23 chemicals. California’s Tubbs Fire in 2017 and the Camp Fire “are the first known wildfires where widespread drinking water chemical contamination was discovered in the water distribution network,” according to a recent study published by several researchers including Whelton with the American Water Works Association. But Whelton’s new research on the Marshall Fire in Boulder County Colorado, shows a group of heavier compounds, called “semi-volatile,” can contaminate damaged water lines as well, even when benzene and other better-known chemicals are not there. “You can’t use VOCs to predict whether SVOCs are present.” For people on Maui who get their water from private wells, now would be a good time to get it tested, said Steve Wilson, a groundwater hydrologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.