Trending
LOWELL -- No one knows exactly why the drinking water in Lowell turned brown, but about 15 people showed up at a board meeting of the village water utility Monday night looking for answers.
The problem is caused by oxides of manganese and iron in the water. Both metals occur naturally in groundwater, and the EPA has said the water remains safe to drink. Most of the time the presence of the metals goes unnoticed, but both oxidize in the presence of free chlorine.
Lowell resident Gary Ward told the board that he's put new pipe in his house on Fifth Street right out to the meter and installed a filtration system to try to solve the problem.
"This filter is supposed to last six months," he said, holding up a clear plastic bag containing a filter the size of a big coffee can. It was completely black. "This is after a week. It should still be white."
The filters, he said, cost $23 each. Ward said he's concerned that a new tankless water heater in his house might have its warranty voided. He wanted to know whether the village would compensate him somehow.
"We'll check with our solicitor and insurance company," water board president Liz Zimmerman said.
Ward's case is extreme - the impact of the problem appears to depend on the location within the water system -- but complaints have become common since November of last year, when things began to go wrong.
Jeffrey Carr, a consultant to the village from ADR and Associates of Newark, said a number of events could have contributed to the problem.
The village had a couple of big fires and some line breaks in the 80-year-old distribution system, all of which required additional chlorine to maintain a safe level of disinfection. The surge of chlorine might have reacted with residual manganese in the system - which, it became apparent in the meeting, hadn't been flushed out with regularity until the past several months - simultaneously generating manganese oxide and in the process using up the free chlorine being injected into the system, which required more chlorine to keep the disinfectant at safe levels.
"All these things happened, and everything was disrupted," he said.
Bud Mason is a water systems specialist on assignment to Lowell from the Rural Community Assistance Project, a nonprofit funded by state and federal government.
"We were called in by the Ohio EPA to help," he said. Their services come at no cost to the village.
The utility has been flushing lines in an attempt to eject the residual minerals, but the possibilities are limited, Mason said, in part because of the distribution system design - it has several "dead ends," places where the lines end and aren't looped back into the system - and in part because the problem has progressed so far, although Mason, who has worked in the water utility for 25 years, said, "I've seen worse."
The deposits of manganese and iron oxide accumulate, he said, and become resistant to flushing.
"They become sort of tubercular," he said, holding one hand in an irregular bunch.
The village utility is working toward getting a solution that won't drive rate increases that will break its 320 or so customers. That solution involves senior government funding assistance, and that will take time.
"The next round of available funding will be considered in March," Carr told the meeting. Meanwhile, he said, the EPA has asked the utility to develop a detailed plan with costs that takes two approaches: either connecting to a regional water utility or developing a method of treating the problem on its own.
"We have the numbers and have presented them to the EPA, but they have asked us to include line replacement," he said.
Zimmerman, the other two board members and the staff of the utility all have less than a year of experience with the utility, and the expertise of Mason and Carr have helped them direct the approach to fixing the problem.
"My job is to help you clean up the distribution system, remove the dead ends," Mason said. "As the flushing is being done, we're doing a leak survey. All that flushing, you could call it deferred maintenance, I guess."
He said what matters is naturally-occurring manganese, and recommended that the utility try to monitor the Muskingum River to see whether there's any correlation between its manganese levels and those in the village wells.
Zimmerman said the system pumps about 70,000 gallons of water a day.
Before the meeting adjourned, she asked those who attended to spread the word that the utility would like to hear from everyone about variations in the appearance of their water so that data can be gathered and dated.
The board is scheduled to meet again at 6 p.m. Sept. 16 in the village hall.