Just outside the small town of Edgewood, Iowa there is an area where the water flows but neighbors don’t drink what comes out of the faucet. Some are convinced consuming their life sustaining element would be detrimental to their health.

The water does not come from the town's system, but from private wells.

“I would think that this ought to be kind of everyone’s number one concern out there,” said Edgewood farmer, Rick Gudenkauf.

Over the summer Rick says more than 30 of his animals died after drinking his well water.

“It was to the point where nobody could really figure out where my problem was at in the beginning,” said Gudenkauf.

7th degree taekwondo black belt Bob McDowell is another, he lives right next door to Rick. Bob’s water he reports has been suspect, to say the least, for the last four years.

“You can see that it (the water) turns yellow as it sits,” said McDowell.

Both Bob and Rick get their water from private wells and as it turns out they may have reason to worry. Tests found water in the area that is known to have high nitrate levels. Nitrates are a chemical some studies suggest can cause cancer and in infants, death.

“My goal would be that everyone who drinks water out of a private well has that well tested at least once a year,” said Russ Tell, the private well specialist for the Department of Natural Resources.

Russ says he has received many reports over the years from Iowans concerned their well water is causing them health problems.

“What I hear is the same thing you would hear, where someone in the area has cancer and they don’t, they haven’t necessarily had caner in their extended family and they’re trying to figure out where it comes from,” said Tell. “The water is just one of those things that is scrutinized.”

Nitrates can occur in nature from erosion but they can also be created from fertilizer runoff, leaking septic tanks, and even sewage. While around 288,000 Iowans rely on private well, well water quality in Iowa is unregulated. If well water is tested or not is entirely up to the well owner themselves. In practice, that translates to only about 6% of wells being tested every year. The EPA recommends wells not exceed 45 milligrams per liter in nitrates.

KCRG-TV9 looked at seven counties in Eastern Iowa to see the scope of the problem. We looked at tests counties performed and found 165 wells tested in 2016 in alone were above the EPA’s nitrate guidelines. In Delaware County, where Rick and Bob live, there were 84, the highest on our list. One of Rick’s wells tested in 2015 came back three times higher than what the EPA recommends.

Which brings us back to Bob. Around the same time Rick’s animals had died he was diagnosed with cancer. Rick says he is the first in his family to come down with the disease and that he never smoked, hasn’t had a drink of alcohol since 1994, exercises regularly and watches what he eats.

“It just blew my mind when the doctor said I have cancer,” said McDowell.

When we sat down with Bob he told us the only water test he had ever done was with a strip, the results of which appeared to indicate nitrates were present. Bob had never had his well water tested at lab though, so TV9-News did it for him, transporting water samples from his kitchen faucet to the State Hygienic Laboratory at the University of Iowa.

The lab tested for both bacteria and nitrates. The results of which say his water is safe to drink, nitrates were less than 1 milligram per liter. Still, Russ with DNR cautions Bob may not want to rejoice just yet, telling us if we had tested his water at a different time of year we may have received different results.

Bob says whatever our results found he would be limiting his consumption of yellow water. So for now, his future involves more questions and opening up lots and lots of bottles.

“You couldn’t make me drink my water,” said McDowell.

Just because well water isn’t colored doesn’t mean there isn’t problem. All you have to do to get your water tested is call your local county sanitarian and arrange for a sample to be taken. Many tests can even be done for free through a state program called Grants-to-Counties. If you would like to have your well tested and need to find out who to get in touch with you can find that information

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