The notice states that the City regularly monitors the drinking water for “turbidity,” or cloudiness, which indicates whether the water supply is being effectively filtered. Normal turbidity levels for the City plant are <0.3 NTU (turbidity units). In August, water samples taken showed levels between 0.18-0.78 NTU (turbidity units). The notice states that because of the high levels of turbidity, there is an increased chance that the water supply may contain “disease-causing organisms.”
Despite this, the notice also states that the situation is “not an emergency,” and that if it had been, “community members would have been notified within 24 hours.”
“There is nothing you need to do,” the notice from the City reads. “You do not need to boil your water or take other actions. We do not know of any contamination, and none of our testing has shown disease-causing organisms in the drinking water.”
The City wrote that turbidity itself has no direct health effects, although it also acknowledges that it can interfere with disinfection and provide a medium for microbial growth, as well as potentially indicate the presence of disease-causing organisms, including bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
The city notes that disease-causing organisms can cause symptoms such as nausea, cramps, diarrhea, and associated headaches; however, it also states that these symptoms are not caused solely by organisms in drinking water. The City suggests that if you experience any of these symptoms and they persist, you may want to seek medical advice, and, if you have a severely compromised immune system, an infant, are pregnant, or are elderly, you may be at increased risk and should seek advice from your health care providers about drinking the City water.
In response to the turbidity level, the City says that the “chlorine residual is kept under close watch to make sure we keep the water as sanitary as possible while through our distribution system.”
The EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Hotline can be contacted at 1-800-426-4791. The City provided the information in the notice for “general guidelines on ways to lessen the risk of infection by microbes.”
