Dan Telvock

Dan Telvock is Investigate Post's environmental reporter. A native of the Finger Lakes region, he was an award-winning newspaper reporter in Virginia for 13 years, including stints at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg and The Winchester Star, before joining Investigative Post. He founded and operated The Landry Hat, a blog that covered the Dallas Cowboys, from 2005 to 2008, while also working as a reporter.

Nov 22

2016

Water authority’s disinformation campaign

Investigative Post’s report two weeks ago showed how the Erie County Water Authority cut corners in its sampling program for lead in drinking water. The water authority responded to our report with a campaign that included an email to customers, posts to Twitter and paid advertising on Facebook. The authority’s underlying message: The water is more pure than many brands of bottled water. Therefore, there is nothing to be concerned about. We fact checked the authority’s campaign and found numerous misleading statements and unsubstantiated claims, some of which we discuss in this report aired Tuesday with our partners at WGRZ. “They’re trying[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Nov 10

2016

Podcast: Telvock talks lead with Marc Edwards

In the latest episode of Investigative Postcast, environmental reporter Dan Telvock talks to Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards about the risks posed by lead in drinking water, and why it’s a bigger problem than local governments want to acknowledge. Keeping drinking water safe, Edwards said, is primarily about following existing laws: “Trying to make sure that the environmental policemen do their job.” That’s made harder by the fact that there’s a “culture of complacency” towards lead in drinking water, Edwards said. “They’re trying to defend the indefensible,” Edwards said, discussing Investigative Post’s recent story about how the Erie County Water Authority[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Nov 7

2016

Water Authority cut corners in lead program

The Erie County Water Authority is cutting corners in its testing program for lead in the drinking water supplied to most local suburbs. The authority has historically made little effort to meet a federal mandate to test homes deemed most at risk for lead contamination. In fact, Investigative Post found several examples where the authority tested houses that clearly do not meet the criteria. “If this monitoring is flawed, if this monitoring it not actually targeting the highest risk homes, then consumers may be receiving erroneous information and false assurances about how safe the water is,” said Yanna Lambrinidou, a[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Oct 31

2016

Podcast: Dan Telvock on lead reporting

In this episode of Investigative Postcast, Investigative Post’s environment reporter Dan Telvock discusses his award-winning coverage of Western New York’s lead poisoning problem, which has recently prompted the City of Buffalo to introduce new initiatives to combat the problem. Telvock explains why lead poisoning poses such a threat to young children and why New York’s schools are now testing their water for lead, thanks to an emergency law passed earlier this year. “In the past, they really didn’t do it on a regular basis. Our schools never were really aggressively testing for lead in any of the water sources in[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Oct 20

2016

Buffalo beefs up efforts to test water for lead

Mayor Byron Brown proclaimed Wednesday that Buffalo’s water is “lead safe” after samples from more than 150 homes showed results below the federal government’s standard. “Still, we know people are concerned and we felt it was imperative that we do more in Buffalo to reassure our residents that we are using best practices and doing everything we can to make sure our water supply and distribution system is safe,” Brown said. The mayor announced a series of new initiatives that he said go above and beyond what the federal Environmental Protection Agency requires water utilities to do to ensure drinking[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Oct 18

2016

City Hall acts on lead poisoning

The Common Council passed legislation Tuesday to address chipping and peeling lead paint hazards in rental units following years of reporting by Investigative Post on Buffalo’s serious lead poisoning problem. The new legislation requires landlords and property managers to: Permit inspectors to check for lead hazards on all rental units built before 1978. Certify that rental units built before 1978 are free of lead paint hazards by submitting a compliance letter from a licensed inspector. Disclose to renters that lead paint could be present in apartments built before 1978. Attend an accredited course on how to safely renovate, repair and paint[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Oct 4

2016

Poloncarz open to expanded lead testing

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz stopped short of requiring his health department to mandate tap water sampling in homes where children are already diagnosed with high lead levels, but he did say that “maybe we do need to take additional steps, such as testing the water.” He said testing drinking water for lead might make sense in the event county health inspectors fail to find any lead paint problems in the home. His remarks come a little over a month after Investigative Post reported that disparity, ‘cheating’ and potential conflicts plague Buffalo’s sampling program for lead in drinking water. While[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Sep 30

2016

A new low point for Buffalo’s Hoyt Lake

Most people familiar with water quality problems in Buffalo were not surprised Thursday night when city officials issued a warning that a “harmful blue-green algae bloom” surfaced in Hoyt Lake at Delaware Park. Instead, they were surprised that it took this long for one of these blooms to appear in Buffalo. “Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time until we started to see harmful algal blooms in Western New York’s waters,” said Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper Executive Director Jill Jedlicka. After all, Hoyt Lake and its neighbor Scajaquada Creek for decades have been cesspools of disease and fecal bacteria that[...]

Posted 8 years ago