City: No reason to believe discolored water poses health concerns
Sep. 1—PLATTSBURGH — City officials say a build up of silt in the storage tanks is the cause behind some residents' water turning brown and discolored.
City of Plattsburgh Environmental Manager Jonathan Ruff said Wednesday that they have no reason to believe the silt poses any harm to the public.
"So far, we're not seeing anything that would lead us to believe there are health concerns. We reviewed the situation this morning with the county and state health department officials and, from their perspective, they seem to be satisfied that there weren't any health concerns that would warrant any boil water advisories or anything like that," Ruff said.
"But common sense does tell you, if your water is brown, don't drink it or use it for cooking until it clears up, just to be on the safe side."
The discolored water seems to clear up after a while for people, he said.
WHAT THE SILT IS
Officials are not exactly sure what the silt consists of just yet, he said.
"We don't know exactly what it is...it just seems to be some fine particles that might have gotten through the filtration system. After the filtration system, we also add chlorine to it to disinfect it and make sure that there's no bacterial problems," Ruff said.
"Since the discolored water started, we've increased the number of bacteria samples we're collecting. We've increased the surveillance of disinfectant that we do throughout the system to make sure it looks like all the water is disinfected. and so far, it looks good from that perspective. It's just that we have this little bit of silty dirty stuff that seems to get stirred up once in a while and it's causing these issues."
COULD TAKE WEEKS TO CLEAR SYSTEM
He said they're currently working on removing all the silt from the storage tanks by flushing the distribution piping.
That process can take a couple weeks, Ruff said.
"It's not going to happen overnight, we're hoping that we're going to have the tanks cleaned out of silt by the middle of next week sometime and then we're going to start flushing the distribution system," he said.
"Now, as that's all happening, we expect the frequency of the discolored water to decrease and the severity of it to decrease, meaning the discoloration should start to fade also as we're working our way through this."
BROUGHT IN SPECIALISTS
Ruff said they're actively working to find out what caused the silt build up so they can prevent it from happening in the future.
"We've had a number of water quality specialists, chemical specialists come in and they've been able to help us make sure that the water we're making and going to the tanks is good. But nobody's been able to figure out why this happened in the first place. That being said, the accumulation of silt in a storage tank or in a distribution system is not uncommon. It happens, which is why we periodically drain the tanks and clean them and we periodically flush the distribution system," he said.
"Why this has gotten so bad this year, right now, we don't know the answer to that."
BEEN VERY CHALLENGING
But, Ruff said, they are doing the best they can to solve the issue quickly.
"First of all it's important for people to understand we're aware of the problem, it's important for them to understand that we care. We're sorry that everybody is going through this and that we are working really, really hard to try to get this resolved; it's been very challenging for us," he said.
"The big thing is to make sure people are safe, it seems like the water we're making is safe and now we've got to make sure that this nuisance issue goes away."
Email: cnewton@pressrepublican.com
Twitter: CarlySNewton
