Hidden Hazards Episode 2

Hidden Hazards Episode 2: What Can You Actually Do?

By Jada Palmer | Contributors: Noelle Corley and Danny Cardwell Allegheny Mountain Radio

In the first episode of Hidden Hazards, Jada Palmer took listeners underground — through contaminated soil, leaching gob piles, and the slow, invisible movement of pollutants toward the water and land communities depend on most. It was a sobering look at what lies beneath the Allegheny Highlands.

Part two asks a different question: now that you know, what do you do?

She opens with water. If you’re on a well or a spring, she says, test it every year — not just when something seems off. Contamination often builds slowly, without any obvious sign, until it’s already a problem. The Allegheny Health District can help. Activated carbon filters and reverse osmosis systems can remove PFAS and heavy metals from what’s already coming through your tap.

Jada moves into the garden, the yard, the ditch along the driveway — the ordinary places where individual choices quietly shape what enters the watershed. And she is direct about what to do when something looks wrong. Virginia DEQ’s pollution response hotline. The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Clean Water Hotline. These are not abstract agencies. They are starting points.

But Palmer doesn’t stop at individual action. She points to organizations like the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance and the Cow Pasture River Preservation Association, which train residents to collect water samples and track environmental changes over time. Citizens monitoring their own land and waterways, she notes, often catch problems before agencies do.

The full Hidden Hazards series is available at AlleghenyMountainRadio.org and on AMR’s Facebook page. This reporting is supported through the Listening Post Collective, via Internews and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.