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Late in the 1960s, a nurse who worked in a publicly owned facility in Fallon retired. Freed from the danger of losing her job, she contacted Nevada state health officer Edward Crippen to tell him of a secret Churchill County officials had been keeping. The water in the county, she said, was dangerously high in arsenic content. Local officials had kept the information secret because they were afraid it would scare away tourists.

Dr. Crippen had the water tested and found the nurse's information was correct. He then informed local officials in Fallon they needed to deal with the problem, presumably by either finding a new water source or treating the old one. Then he took off on a trip to Elko. "I went out looking at the different problems out there and also checking on the whorehouses," he told me a couple of years ago. In those days, health checks at the brothels were one of the duties of the state health officer. It was while he was in Elko he learned Fallon officials and the governor were trying to get him fired.

Acting Fallon Mayor Merton Domonoske said, "We're not too concerned about the water. We realize we've been drinking the same water for 30 years. This isn't something that developed overnight. We've received all this adverse publicity and are badly hurt by it. We are the center for tourists, duck and deer hunters and are trying to get industry in here."

Domonoske contacted Gov. Paul Laxalt, who called Crippen's action in alerting the public to a health threat "highly irresponsible." Laxalt canceled the order for local officials to deal with the arsenic and called the Nevada Board of Health into session to fire Crippen, which it did on Feb. 26, 1969. Domonoske and Laxalt guaranteed exactly the publicity they tried to avoid -- the firing was news across the nation, frequently on front pages.

Dr. Crippen then donated some books to the University of Nevada, left the state and went on to a distinguished career elsewhere. He was one of several Nevada health officers fired or forced out during that period. Each lasted only a few months -- seven, in Crippen's case.

Dononoske went on to be elected mayor, continuing to endanger the public's health and engaging in right wing politics.

And Fallon went on to become nationally known for a cancer "cluster" and endless scientific studies, some of which drew attention to the arsenic, though it is unknown whether it was a contributing factor. (For those interested, the Centers for Disease Control have a page on the Fallon problems posted at www.cdc.gov/nceh/clusters/Fallon/default.htm.)

Thirty years passed before the city came to grips with the arsenic problem. And last week two of the Fallon city councilmembers who finally contributed to its solution met Dr. Crippen's fate. John Tewell and Willis Swan were forced to leave their seats on the council, not by being dumped but by being term limited.

"They sought nothing more than to serve the public," said Mayor Ken Tedford. "This is the end of an era at the city."

"[I]n his term the city has gained two new parks, an arsenic water treatment plant and waste water treatment plant, two s and a downtown renovation," the Lahontan Valley News reported about Swan. "Swan said he enjoyed participating in meetings when the new national arsenic standard for drinking water was set and watching the city's arsenic water treatment plant become a reality. He was once president of the Nevada League of Cities, chairman of the Western Municipalities Conference and served on the boards of the Churchill Economic Development Authority and the Lahontan Valley Environmental Alliance. ... Tewell was the chair of the Fallon Convention & Tourism Authority board and a member of the volunteer fire department's board. ... Tewell was [also] a councilman in Elko and a planning commissioner in Elko County before he moved to Fallon 19 years ago. In total, he has served 24 years as a councilman in Nevada."

Fortunately, in our wisdom and prescience, we have protected the public from that kind of accumulation of knowledge and skills.