Letter: Change YC water, limit cancer risk?

I am asking the people of Hillcrest Water District to support changing over to Yuba City surface water. Our lives may depend on it.

My husband and I have lived in the Hillcrest Water District for over 30 years. Since 1976 I drank our tap water and used it for cooking without thinking about arsenic levels, but last January I was diagnosed with renal cell (kidney) cancer. I was very lucky some medical tests found it before it had spread, but after a difficult surgery I only have one kidney left.

Kidney cancer is a rare cancer and even rarer for a woman. While looking for some answers, I found out on the American Cancer Society Web site that long-term exposure to even very low doses of arsenic in groundwater increase incidence of kidney and other urinary tract cancers.

Surface water almost never has arsenic. Blending Hillcrest groundwater with Yuba City surface water as some have proposed, will still give us water with low doses of arsenic in it. I can't afford to get cancer in my remaining kidney, so no more arsenic for me.

Kidney cancer usually does not have any warning signs until it is too late. Others in our water district may already have it or bladder cancer and not know. Now that we know what arsenic can cause, we cannot continue to expose ourselves to it.

Dianne Rose
Yuba City