Few public sources keep up with testing regulations
By Dan Stockman
The Three Rivers Filtration Plant has had just one minor violation from the federal Environmental Protection Agency in the past five years.
More than 300,000 people in Allen County depend on clean, safe water coming out of their taps every day for drinking, cooking and cleaning, but only a small minority of public water systems have complied with water testing requirements in the last five years to ensure water quality.
Of the 101 public water sources in Allen County, 75 systems in the last five years have had at least one monitoring or reporting violation, an analysis by The Journal Gazette found. Forty-six systems have had monitoring or reporting violations the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deems "significant."
Twenty-four systems had health violations, according to the EPA, meaning contaminants in the water posed an imminent health risk.
Though most people think of public water systems as large, city utility systems, the state and federal government regulate nearly 5,000 systems in Indiana, including wells that serve mobile home parks, small schools and tiny cafes.
The violators included large systems such as Fort Wayne City Utilities' Three Rivers Filtration Plant and tiny ones such as churches and restaurants. One, St. Joseph Hessen Cassel Catholic School, racked up 55 significant violations in five years.
Cedar Creek Church of Christ Day Care in Leo-Cedarville had 29 significant violations; other systems had dozens of violations each.
Water systems are responsible for ensuring the testing is done, either through the Indiana Department of Environmental Management or a certified laboratory. For most small systems, this consists of filling bottles with water and sending them in.
If a test is not performed or the water does not pass the test, a violation is issued. Some tests must be performed monthly, others quarterly and some yearly. A large system such as Fort Wayne City Utilities must test daily.
The violations are issued and tracked by IDEM, then reported to the EPA. The Journal Gazette analyzed the data held by the EPA, which is available at www.epa.gov/safewater.
Experts said the number of violations may sound high, but not when you consider they are spread over five years.
Al Lao, section chief for compliance in the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's Office of Water Quality, said that although his office views every violation as "significant," on a monthly basis there are relatively few systems that are not monitoring their water properly.
At any one time, he said, there are usually fewer than 5 percent of the nearly 5,000 public water sources in the state that are not testing properly, he said.
"We require every system that has any violation ... to notify their customers what violation they have and what they are planning to do to correct the violation," Lao said.
Some of the violations accumulate quickly, Lao said, because an entire group of contaminants is monitored by one test. St. Joseph Hessen Cassel Catholic School, for example, in the third quarter of 2003 did not test for volatile organic compounds. Since that category covers 21different contaminants, the water system was deemed by the EPA to have 21 violations. IDEM does not view it that way, Lao said.
"We consider them to be one violation, because they missed one test procedure," he said.
Robert Herber, the principal of St. Joseph, pointed out that the violations were because tests were missed, not because of contaminated water. The school had one violation related to ensuring there is no lead in the water, but that has been resolved since 2003.
Herber said his concern is that parents will see the large number of violations and assume the water is unsafe, when that is not the case. Ensuring the water is safe is a top concern, he said, but just one of many responsibilities he has. Forty-two of the violations were from twice missing a 21-contaminant test.
"You're talking about children, and we should be extraordinarily safe in trying to protect them," Herber said. "As a parent, I want them to be safe when they go to school."
Cedar Creek Child Care, run by Cedar Creek Church of Christ, had 29 significant monitoring or reporting violations, all of them related to missed tests in 2004.
Jon L'hommedieu, a church member who oversees the testing, said he does not believe the EPA data showing 29 significant violations are correct.
"You start messing around with databases, anything can happen," L'hommedieu said. "I really do think something's been lost in the translation."
The violations were verified by IDEM, but some point out that sometimes the violation is IDEM's fault, saying that test results sent to the agency electronically sometimes get lost in IDEM's system -- resulting in a violation.
If there were problems at Cedar Creek Child Care, L'hommedieu said, they were all testing or reporting problems, as no contamination has ever been found in the water.
"That's key -- we've never detected a problem," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, the thing's totally safe."
He said there had been problems with "amateurs" trying to do the sampling before he took over and had it handled by a certified lab. The violations, which all occurred in 2004, could have come during the switchover, he said.
Phillippa Cannon, spokeswoman for the EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago, said ensuring the safety of the nation's drinking water rests upon self-testing. If those tests aren't done, there's no way to know the water is not contaminated.
"It's a self-monitoring system, and we rely on these systems to submit accurate and timely reports so we know their water is safe to drink," Cannon said. "That's just how the system works."
Ridgeview Mennonite Church in Woodburn has had three significant monitoring or reporting violations, and three non-significant violations in five years. The importance of that testing became clear when testing found coliform bacteria in the water, resulting in three health violations. The presence of coliform bacteria is a sign that the water may be contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria from feces. That requires chlorinating the well and flushing pipes to ensure the water supply is safe.
"We definitely don't want to do anything that's going to cause problems with anybody," the Rev. Lester Zehr said. "You definitely don't want your people getting sick."
On the other hand, while he wants to ensure the safety of his 75 church-goers, Zehr said the hassle and expense of meeting state and federal requirements is a burden.
For a while, the testing was free, he said, but is now about $30 per test. When tests have to be repeated, the cost adds up quickly, he said.
The EPA says a health violation, such as the three at Ridgeview Mennonite Church, does not mean those who drank or used the water got sick but that they were exposed to an "unreasonable risk of illness" or that the water wasn't treated to the extent EPA requires to prevent illness.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics show 419 outbreaks of illness from contaminated drinking water between 1980 and 1998. But most of the estimated 511,000 people sickened in those outbreaks were from one case: the 1993 Cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee.
Experts say the risk of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people being sickened by one source is what makes testing so important. They also believe the number of people sickened is underestimated, because most healthy adults who contract a waterborne illness will have only mild symptoms and not report it.
AquaIndiana's north system, which serves 30,900 customers on the north side of Fort Wayne, had one health violation when coliform was detected in the water in September 2004, and one significant monitoring violation, in 2003.
Fort Wayne City Utilities, which serves 250,000 customers, garnered a non-significant violation in 2001 when it sent a certification in late.
Other systems with violations included the state-run rest areas on U.S. 30 near Arcola, both of which have had seven significant violations in the last five years. The Indiana State Police Post in Fort Wayne has had five significant violations and 12 non-significant violations in the last five years.
dstockman@jg.net