Like every town across the nation, south suburban Crestwood tucks a notice into utility bills each summer reassuring residents their drinking water is safe. Village leaders also trumpet the claim in their monthly newsletter, while boasting they offer the cheapest water rates in Cook County.

But those pronouncements hide a troubling reality: For more than two decades, the 11,000 or so residents in this working-class community unknowingly drank tap water contaminated with toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems, a Tribune investigation found.

As village officials were building a national reputation for pinching pennies, and sending out fliers proclaiming Crestwood water was "Good to taste but not to waste!," state and village records obtained by the newspaper show they secretly were drawing water from a contaminated well, apparently to save money.

Officials kept using the well even though state environmental officials told them at least 22 years ago that dangerous chemicals related to a dry-cleaning solvent had oozed into the water, records show.

The village avoided scrutiny by telling state regulators in 1986 that they would get all of their tap water from Lake Michigan, and would use the well only in an emergency. But records show Crestwood kept drawing well water on a routine basis - relying on it for up to 20 percent of the village's water supply some months.

The well wasn't shut off for good until December 2007, after the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency tested the water for the first time in more than 20 years. The agency found not only that the well was still contaminated but that Crestwood had been piping the water, untreated, to residents.

Since then, the EPA has cited Crestwood twice for violating environmental laws, yet has failed to notify people who drank the well water for years. The agency continues to investigate, and Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan's office also is looking into the matter.

The most likely source of the contamination is a dry cleaners in a strip mall less than 300 feet from Crestwood's well, just across a narrow, tree-lined creek that drains into the nearby Cal-Sag Channel. The well water is polluted with two chemicals related to perchloroethylene, or PCE, a dry-cleaning solvent linked to cancer, liver damage and neurological problems.

Thousands of other sites are contaminated with the same chemicals, usually from illegal dumping or improper disposal. But there are few if any other documented cases when public officials knew about the problem and looked the other way.

Crestwood's actions began to come to light after a mother refused to stop asking questions about why her teenage son suffered leukemia as a toddler. One of her numerous public-records requests turned up a report outlining some of what the EPA knew about the contaminated well, and she prodded state investigators to dig deeper into the case. The Tribune discovered more details through interviews and public-records requests.

"I'm so sad and angry and disappointed about this," said Tricia Krause, who moved to Crestwood in 1987 and gave birth to three children while living there for nearly nine years. "There is no excuse for what they did to all of us."

It is unknown if the water contributed to any health problems in Crestwood, including the cancer diagnosed in Krause's son, Matthew, now 19 and healthy. State officials haven't tried to answer that difficult question but say the risks were minimal because the well water was heavily diluted with treated lake water.

However, it generally isn't acceptable to rely on dilution to ensure water is safe to drink. One of the chemicals found in Crestwood's well, vinyl chloride, is so toxic that the U.S. EPA says there is no safe level of exposure.

"We know these things are carcinogens, and their presence in our drinking water doesn't do us any good," said David Ozonoff, a Boston University epidemiologist and PCE expert.

For years Crestwood was best known for its longtime mayor, Chester "Chet" Stranczek, a former minor-league pitcher and trucking company owner who boasted that he ran the village like a business. Stranczek retired in 2007 after nearly four decades in office and was succeeded by his son, Robert.

When the tightfisted Stranczek started rebating property taxes to every homeowner during the mid-1990s, the action was so unusual the National Enquirer declared Crestwood the "best-run town in America."

"I know every inch of Crestwood," Stranczek told the Sun-Times in 1997. "I know every curb, every sidewalk, every stormwater drain. I know all the dikes. I built most of them."

The June 2001 edition of the Crestwood Adviser, a village newsletter, is one of several that touts low water rates. Next to a portrait of Stranczek, it states: "... we can save you a lot of time by saying that Crestwood water has passed all the tests prescribed by the EPA during the past year. The results were very favorable, and we have safe drinking water."

That same year, records show, the village pumped more than 51 million gallons of contaminated well water to its residents.

Stranczek and village officials did not respond to repeated Tribune attempts to reach them for comment.

Drawing water from the municipal well, housed in a crumbling yellow-brick building under the village water tower off 127th Street, enabled Crestwood officials to cut back on purchases of lake water treated by Chicago and piped to nearby Alsip.

In 1986, village officials announced they would buy treated water exclusively from Alsip. That same year, the state EPA tested Crestwood's well and found that a PCE-related chemical had leached into the water. Crestwood placed the well on "emergency-backup status," records show, and state officials stopped requiring routine testing for chemical pollutants.

In following years, Crestwood's annual "consumer confidence reports," required under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, told residents they were drinking only treated lake water. But village officials kept using the well, according to a hand-written ledger buried in village files and verified by the state EPA.

EPA investigators have questioned a village official who confirmed to them that, to save money, he and others frequently turned on a valve that allowed untreated well water to flow into Crestwood's distribution system. The official did not answer several Tribune requests for an interview.

The likely source of the contamination also emerged in 1986, when a company that owned the strip mall housing the dry cleaners tried to join an EPA cleanup program.

Agency files, obtained by the Tribune under the Freedom of Information Act, document that high levels of PCE had contaminated soil near a barrel where waste chemicals were supposed to be collected for safe disposal.

Once PCE soaks into the ground, the chemical forms a plume that can move quickly into groundwater and breaks down into two other toxic chemicals, dichloroethylene and vinyl chloride.

Interviews and reviews of agency files indicate the mall's owner dropped out of the cleanup program and "never did anything at the site," according to an EPA memo. Neither did the EPA.

"It just kind of died," said Joyce Munie, an agency official who oversees the state's cleanup program.

Regulators are overwhelmed by the number of contaminated sites across the state and don't have the manpower to scour every file, Munie said. Dry cleaners account for 16 percent of the 4,038 sites in the program.

Crestwood's use of its well might have stayed secret, but the EPA in 2007 decided to order tests of every municipal well statewide. When inspectors took samples from Crestwood in October of that year, the level of vinyl chloride in the water was 5.41 parts per billion, more than twice the legal limit for drinking water.

(Though regulators say there is no safe level of exposure to many chemicals, they often compromise and set legal limits based on the ability of water systems to remove contaminants.)

The EPA gave Crestwood a choice: Cap the well for good or pay for expensive treatment that would limit exposure to the chemicals. The village chose to shut off the well.

Since then, state officials have not told residents about the contaminated water, despite a 2005 right-to-know law requiring the EPA or the Illinois Department of Public Health to notify citizens who could be exposed to soil or groundwater pollution. The law was championed by then-Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, now the state's governor.

Asked about the lack of public notification, EPA officials first said the area near the dry cleaners was contaminated too long ago. Later they said it was because the level of vinyl chloride in Crestwood's tap water didn't violate the legal limit.

The only public hint that something might be wrong was an Aug. 13 news release from the Public Health Department. In the release, the agency warns that vinyl chloride might have contaminated private wells in the area.

"Although the contaminants were found in Crestwood's groundwater," the release states, "Crestwood now receives all of its water from Lake Michigan, which meets U.S. [EPA] standards, so those using the public water supply are not affected."

The statement is technically correct, since the well had been shut off before the release was issued. What it fails to mention is that Crestwood had sent well water into people's homes for years.