The Larely Beagle – The Community Newspaper of Larely, California

Larely, CA – A study completed by UC Larely’s Chemistry Department yielded alarming results when it was discovered that drinking water all over America is being contaminated by the unused free trial hours from AOL discs.

The discs, which were very heavily distributed to the American population during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, offered free online hours and other incentives in exchange for people signing up for America Online’s service. The mailing program concluded in 2006 after more than one billion disks were mailed out and there is no way to know for sure how many of those discs now reside in America’s landfills.

According to UC Larely Chemistry Professor, Dr. Charles Osborne, “The free trial hours were only made to adhere to the surface of the disc for a couple years. After that period has passed, they start to degrade and separate from the disc. Once they’ve separated, the free trial hours are extremely water soluble and end up in drinking water quite easily, which is going to create serious problems here in the United States.”

According to United States Environmental Protection Agency, [U.S. EPA] unused free trial hours in drinking water at a level exceeding 10 parts per billion can result in serious health problems. Even more troubling is the fact that Dr. Osborne suspects that the drinking water near some of America’s largest landfills probably contains nearly five times that amount.

AOL, which is owned by Time Warner Company is refusing to take responsibility for the problem. In a statement released by their legal department they said, “None of the blame for this problem can be placed on AOL. This is entirely the fault of the American people, who chose not to use the free trial hours that were so generously sent them. The cash value of those trial hours was worth well into the billions, and we feel that by eating those costs, we are absolved of any legal culpability.”

This argument, however, is being refuted by Prodigy, an online service that used to compete with AOL. According to them, “An environmental impact study commissioned by both AOL and ourselves in the early 1990’s predicted that this would happen. That’s why we made the decision to instead bundle ourselves with IBM PS/1’s and PS/2’s. AOL chose the route of inundating the American people with discs for nearly ten years knowing all along that someday those unused hours would wind up in drinking water.”

There is no word yet on what the official government reaction to this problem will be. There has been talk of turning some of the most polluted landfills into Superfund sites, but it is uncertain whether or not there is enough money that fund to take on so many new projects.