Gallery – #DeeperThanWater

All of the progress that has been made on the ongoing crisis is because of inside organizing. This report was researched and generated by the Norfolk Inmate Council and self-published. This report is what broke the story to the Boston Globe. Organizers inside involved in gathering this data have been heavily sanctioned and had privileges removed. Many were put in solitary confinement (which Mass DOC euphemistically calls “administrative segregation”).

The Boston Globe reported that the DEP has recorded levels above the legal “action limit” 43% of the time [read here], but this doesn’t go deep enough. When controlled by well site, you see that at least one of the wells hasn’t shown a recorded level below legal limits since May 2016.

One of the main pieces of evidence that the Department of Correction has refused to publicly acknowledge is the claim that they have provided guards and service dogs with bottled water for many years now. This screenshot shows that the DOC has spent almost half a million dollars in the past several years.

This is a roughly 3×3 square of cloth cut from a prisoner’s shirt and used to strain water from the tap into a glass for personal use. This reflects the amount of sediment that collects in only 3 days.

The total expenditure per year averages around 90,000 USD on Bottled Water alone. Their primary vendor is Nestle.

For at least 10 years, employees at the Mass DOC have been using the “voy forums” web board. This screenshot is of a post made during a time that the entire surrounding town was under a boil order. No such order was followed for MCI Norfolk.

In late 2012, early 2013, after failing to comply with the EPA consent order, the DOC entered into private negotiations with the town of Walpole to lease their water supply. The town ultimately declined, stating it was “not in the water business.”

This document was photographed in the visiting room lobby of MCI-Norfolk. Signed by Jeff Quick of the Department of Corrections, this shows that lead levels in the “disciplinary unit” (another MA term for solitary confinement) are 4.5 times the legal limit. Copper is as much as twice the legal limit.