Officials of Crestwood, a village of 11,000 in Cook County, Illinois, used to proclaim that their water was “Good to taste but not to waste!” while cutting taxes as part of their fiscally-conservative municipal operation. Well, it turns out that city leaders were able to offer property tax rebates while providing “quality” water services because they knowingly used a contaminated well to save money. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that state environmental officials told Crestwood officials 22 years ago that a well used for drinking water was tainted with chemicals that had leeched underground from a nearby dry-cleaning business. Consequently, the town’s 11,000 residents had unknowingly consumed water that included vinyl chloride, a solvent so toxic that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it shouldn’t be consumed in any quantity.