Mormon church forced girls to drink contaminated water for years as Utah officials turned a blind eye: report

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is being outed for forcing a girl's summer camp to drink contaminated water for years while they were at the church's summer camp.

According to a personal story from a former camper in the High Country News, the Aspencrest Camp in the Wasatch Mountains above Salt Lake City didn't exactly provide the "mystical experiences" she was told it would.

Campers waited in a line to fill water bottles beside the camp's pavilion, none of them anticipating that the water could be unsafe.

State records revealed a former engineer with the Utah Division of Drinking Water said that the Aspencrest's water was contaminated with bacteria -- and it has remained so for over 20 years.

"While Aspencrest is the setting for some of my fondest childhood memories, I wasn't surprised when this investigation revealed that regulators overlooked potential health risks at church-owned facilities, not once but twice in recent years. The LDS Church, which is omnipresent in Utah, has been widely suspected of dictating public policy and granting leniency to prominent church members who break the law. Why would the regulatory agencies responsible for our health and safety be any different?" asked Emma Penrod. "We never doubted the safety of Aspencrest."

Regulators assigned by the state to ensure safety "turned a blind eye to potential health risks" at several church-owned facilities. The LDS church never did anything to fix the problem, even after decades.

"Though Aspencrest is not the largest recreational facility owned by the LDS Church, state records suggest as many as 600 campers are there during any given week," the report revealed. "At least 90 Salt Lake-area congregations — each representing about 300 members — are assigned to the camp. Most girls between 12 and 16 will spend a week there each year; many young women return in subsequent years as volunteer camp leaders."

According to the state, the spring that Aspencrest draws its water from has been a problem for years, according to an Aug. 2018 memo. The camp has even tested positive for coliform bacteria since 1995. As of June 2019, the bacteria is still there.

Coliform comes from the bacteria found in animal and human feces. While it's also found in plants and soil, the water could be contaminated by fecal matter and could contribute to serious diseases, including E. coli.

But, there haven't been any reports of illness due to the water. Penrod explained that neither she nor her parents would have known that was the cause. If there was nausea, diarrhea or other symptoms, she explained that she and others would likely assume it was a reaction to food.

June 30, 2019, the camp was finally told to fix the problem, after 24 years of contamination that was allowed to perpetuate by Utah officials who gave a pass to the LDS church.

"If the camp accumulated sufficient points, either due to multiple infractions or because violations had been ignored for lengthy periods of time, its approval to provide public drinking water could be revoked," Penrod explained. She didn't explain what a lengthy period was, given it has been a problem for 24 years.

As of early July, however, the Utah Division of Drinking Water hadn't added any infractions to the camp. Instead, they offered to give the camp a clean bill of health if they put chlorine in their drinking water permanently. Previous communications revealed the Utah Division of Drinking Water told the camp "chlorination was not an acceptable long-term remedy."

The state gave the camp permission to put in a disinfection system in 2015, but it wasn't supposed to be a permanent fix to the problem. Camp managers would have to prove that "ongoing disinfection/chlorination is for precautionary purposes at a safe water supply rather than remedial purposes an unsafe water supply," the report said.

Penrod recalled meeting Steve Onysko, a Utah state water engineer who worked for nearly 20 years at the Utah Division of Drinking Water. He contacted her in 2018, saying that, in his opinion, the water division "failed to fulfill their duty to uphold the state's drinking water standards." He was ultimately fired with claims of "work-place abuse," but he believes it's because he was a whistleblower for the problems at the camp.

According to his experience, if the church agreed to fix problems, the Utah Division of Drinking Water would waive any penalties and approve them. The division denies this, but it's unclear why it appears they did exactly that.

In a statement, Utah Division of Drinking Water Director Marie Owens said she works with the LDS Church.

"The system responded to the division in September 2018 that they were complying with the requirement to continuously disinfect," the statement read. They didn't respond to questions about their 2015 memo that the long-term plan the church had for disinfection was unacceptable.

The camp isn't the only one with problems. The Dugway chapel, an LDS church that caters mostly to Army members that primarily works to test biological and chemical weapons, has similar water problems, despite installing an experimental water filter.

According to Penrod, Onysko looked at the Dugway water system and determined the filter might not be capable of reducing naturally occurring minerals and metals that are still unsafe to drink. There was an initial round of tests in 2014, but the division didn't test the site again for three years.

The lack of oversight was what surprised Penrod. She said that she always felt safe in Utah because of the power of her church. Now it has become clear that the church is wielding its power to skirt basic safety regulations.

"Questioning or criticizing church leadership is grounds for excommunication, and high-profile contrarians are frequently ejected from membership," she explained. "In my experience, however, it is less fear than a desire to believe the church possesses an unassailable goodness that creates a culture for granting leniency to it."

She said that as a faithful LDS member she was taught that LDS leaders were directly governed by God. Yet when given the opportunity to protect their own flock from being poisoned, the church has looked for cheaper alternatives that still put people in danger.

"According to the church's instructional manual, God will excuse and even "bless" his followers for acting on the instructions of church leadership, even should the church be proven wrong," Penrod explained.

When Onysko showed the documentation of contamination and the church's efforts to avoid doing anything, Penrod said she felt betrayed by her church. She and her parents thought that the summer camp was a safe space where God would protect her.

Read the full shocking report.