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Mill Creek Park water-testing ends, park to begin data analysis
YOUNGSTOWN
Now that the Mahoning County District Board of Health has wrapped up its 12-week water-testing program in Mill Creek MetroParks, it will begin analyzing the data to determine any trends between E. coli levels and weather patterns.
“That’s something that we’re going to look at, how these weather patterns increase the E. coli level within the testing area and how long it takes these areas to recover, based on if there is less precipitation and more sunlight,” said Ryan Tekac, environmental health director for the county health board.
The board released results from the last round of testing Friday; they showed relatively low levels of E. coli at most of the nine sampling sites. E. coli counts were “significantly” lower than counts from samples collected last week, Tekac said in a release.
The only elevated count recorded this week was a count of 800 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters of water from a site at the Indian Run inlet. The health board has said that a count of 576 or higher is the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s standard that represents a public-health risk.
Throughout the testing program, several sites consistently have had higher levels of E. coli than others; the cause of that has yet to be determined, Tekac said.
Analysis of the data – which includes test results, as well as information about rainfall, temperature, water temperature and average cloud cover – will take about a month, Tekac said.
“We want to make sure we dot all of our i’s and cross all of our t’s and don’t miss anything,” he said.
Conclusions will then be presented to the park, so it can determine what to do about its lakes, which have been closed for recreational use since July.
The testing program began after previous tests, conducted in response to a massive fish kill in Lake Newport in June, found elevated levels of E. coli in the water.