A Special Meeting of the Middletown Town Council was held on July 16, 1992 specifically to address "groundwater problems in the Turner Road, Ward Avenue area and matters related thereto." According to the minutes of this meeting "Town Administrator Michael E. Embury informed the Council that 102 wells were tested by RIDEM and only 27 wells exceeded the 10.0 threshold on nitrates." A resident of 435 Turner Road spoke and "stated that it was unreasonable to bring water lines to the area when so few need it." The Council then voted not to expand the water system into the affected area.
To any resident with a contaminated well, the nitrate problem is a significant problem but to the Town as a whole 27 out of 102 wells may seem to be trivial. As anyone knows, statistics can be presented in different ways to seemingly produce different conclusions. Such was the case in this situation.
The well testing was conducted in three phases with the Department of Health reporting each phase in letters to the Town on 12/11/91, 2/28/92, and 5/28/92. The first letter indicated that 14 out of 33 wells were contaminated (42%). The second letter indicated that 10 out of 16 wells were contaminated (62.5%). The third letter indicated that 3 out of 53 wells were contaminated (5.7%).
Had all these wells been located in the same area of the Town, one might reach the conclusion that the nitrate problem was a minor problem and was actually disappearing as time went by. As can be seen by clicking the MAP below, the wells tested in the third phase were located in an area south and southeast of the original testing sites and clearly this area of the Town is not contaminated whereas the Turner Road and Ward Avenue area has the nitrate problem.
By including the tested wells from the third phase, the Town Administrator was able to deliberately distort the statistics of contaminated wells making it appear that the nitrate problem was a minor irritant and did not need correcting. However, if the statistics of only the first two phases are presented we find that 24 out of 49 wells were contaminated (49%) which is a significant contamination problem.
