How to check water safety before a lake or river outing

(InvestigateTV) — A new report from Environment America found bacteria levels were potentially unsafe on at least one day at 69% of more than 4,500 river and lake testing locations in 17 states.John Rumpler, clean water director and senior attorney at Environment America, said the group’s “Safe for Swimming” report matters as a consumer issue as well as an environmental one.“I can only imagine that if a family drove two or three hours to go to lakeside cabin, and they were planning to spend the entire week at the lake, and then suddenly there was E. coli in the water,” Rumpler said. “I don’t know that I could put that to dollars and cents, but I think we might agree that’s a ruined vacation right there.”Rumpler said E. coli turned up in every state in the analysis.“All across the country in all of these 17 states, we found E. coli, which people may be familiar with E. coli as a nasty bacteria. It’s an indicator of fecal matter, in other words, poop,” Rumpler said. “And so to be clear,