Carroll v. DeTella

Decision Date03 July 2001
Docket NumberNo. 00-1281,00-1281
Citation255 F.3d 470
Parties(7th Cir. 2001) Ronnie W. Carroll, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. George E. DeTella, et al., Defendants-Appellees
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 99 C 2443--Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge.

Before Fairchild, Bauer, and Posner, Circuit Judges.

Posner, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff, a long-time Illinois prison inmate with extended sojourns at Stateville and Menard, brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 for damages and injunctive relief against Illinois prison officials and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and two of its employees. He claims that the drinking water at Stateville is contaminated with radium and the drinking water at Menard with lead. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants. The Illinois EPA is a state agency and thus not a "person" suable under section 1983, Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71 (1989); Arsberry v. Illinois, 244 F.3d 558, 561 (7th Cir. 2001), and its two employees were not served. The plaintiff's complaint about the lead in the water at Menard can also be disposed of quickly. The record establishes that the presence of lead in the water is due to the corrosion of the water pipes, which are made of lead that dissolves in the water--but only when the water is still, as it is overnight, when no one is using it. When the water is flowing, the lead in the pipes does not dissolve. So the plaintiff was told to let the water run for a few minutes in the morning before drinking it, which eliminates the hazard, though it is only an interim precaution while the prison arranges to have the pipes treated or replaced. All this is remote from cruel and unusual punishment.

The radium at Stateville presents a more difficult question. Since 1988, when he first became an inmate of the Illinois prison system, the plaintiff has spent a total of almost four years at Stateville. In 1993, in response to complaints made by inmates to the Illinois EPA concerning the quality of the drinking water, the warden assured the inmates that it was safe--yet three days later the prison began providing its employees with bottled water free of charge to allay their concerns about the safety of the prison's water. Three years later, in response to the plaintiff's inquiry, the Illinois EPA told him that the water contained radium in excess of the maximum level set by the federal EPA. That level, for the combination of radium isotopes involved (radium 226 and radium 228), is 5 pCi/l (picocuries per liter). 40 C.F.R. sec. 141.15. The level in Stateville's water was almost twice that. The plaintiff requested the prison to supply him with bottled water free of charge, but it refused. It was for sale in the prison commissary but the plaintiff claims that he can't afford to buy it.

The following year, 1998, the Illinois EPA told the plaintiff that while Stateville's water supply continued to exceed the federal maximum and that 80 other Illinois water systems had a similar problem (though how similar--that is, what the level of radium in those communities' water is--is not indicated), no remedial action would be taken because the federal EPA was considering raising the maximum level from 5 pCi/l to 20 pCi/l and at that level the concentration of radium in Stateville's water would be well below the maximum. So far as we know, the EPA has not yet raised the level and so Stateville's water continues to contain a level of radium that exceeds the federal maximum. There is some medical evidence that a person who ingested 5 pCi/l of radium 226 plus radium 228 for 70 years would have a 1/10,000th higher risk of cancer; the record contains no evidence on the hazards if any of ingesting twice that level of radium for four years.

Poisoning the prison water supply or deliberately inducing cancer...

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  • Mays v. Dart
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
    • 27 Abril 2020
    ...support his position that compliance with the CDC Guidelines should effectively be dispositive, the Sheriff cites Carroll v. DeTella , 255 F.3d 470 (7th Cir. 2001). There the Seventh Circuit held that a convicted prisoner could not show that prison officials had been deliberately indifferen......
  • Stoltzfus v. Hutchins
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana
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    ...had access to drinking water in other prison areas); Carroll v. DeTella, 2000 WL 20711, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 10, 2000), aff'd, 255 F.3d 470 (7th Cir. 2001) (finding no Eighth Amendment violation where plaintiff requested bottled water due to concerns about the safety of the prison's water ......
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    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana
    • 18 Mayo 2012
    ...more salubrious air, healthier food, or cleaner water than are enjoyed by substantial numbers of free Americans." Carroll v. DeTella, 255 F.3d 470, 472 (7th Cir. 2001). Similarly here, Patin has not alleged that the activity by other inmates and guards placed him in a substantial risk of ha......
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    • U.S. District Court — Eastern District of California
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  • Free-World Law Behind Bars.
    • United States
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    • 1 Marzo 2022
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