Nitrate concentrations in the drinking water are at the line of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking-water standard.
Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality Engineer James Brough, a water-quality specialist, said that nitrate pollution typically stems from agriculture, an unlikely culprit in a community where cropland is limited to hay fields and livestock to a few horses. “I think the Hoback Junction case may be a combination of some lack of oversight in the past,” Brough said, “and a high-density of septic systems for the area.”