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Mahoning health board changes Mill Creek water testing
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County District Board of Health has tweaked its 12-week E. coli testing program for Mill Creek MetroParks water.
The health board has expanded the number of sites in the park that it will test on a weekly basis.
Health board technicians have so far been collecting three samples each from the same three testing sites: the Lake Newport boathouse on West Newport Drive, the Lake Newport boat launch and a footbridge over Mill Creek just north of Shields Road.
“The triplicate samples have yielded very consistent results, so we have reduced the number of samples drawn from each location to two. This will allow for continued sampling of the new locations with the possibility of adding additional locations within the Mill Creek watershed,” said Ryan Tekac, environmental health director for the health board, in a statement released Wednesday.
Samples collected near the footbridge consistently have had higher E. coli counts than samples collected from the other areas. The expansion of testing locations, which began Friday with a round of testing conducted in addition to the usual weekly testing, is a response to that finding.
“We’ve kind of expanded to different parts throughout the Mill Creek watershed so we can narrow down why the samples at the footbridge have been elevated,” said Tekac.
The additional sites included in Friday’s supplemental testing were: a bridge at Smythe Island in the Newport Wetlands; the wetlands shore at Smythe Island; a walking trail off of U.S. Route 224 near the golf course and Old Calla Road near the Mill Creek Wildlife Sanctuary.
The samples collected Friday at the original test sites were consistent with previous results, with footbridge samples showing counts of 520, 410 and 200 colony forming units, respectively, per 100 milliliters of water, and the other two sites showing very low counts.
A count of 576 is the threshold the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency considers a potential public health risk.
Samples drawn near Old Calla Road had counts of 410 and 310; those taken near route 224 had counts of 100, 310 and 100; samples drawn from the two wetlands locations yielded counts of 3,230, 2,590, 2,620 and 1,730.
The health board also conducted testing at all of those sites Monday after a rain event. E. coli counts were up at nearly every location, which Tekac said health board officials expected.
“According to the EPA, anytime after a rainfall you’re going to have elevated levels because there’s going to be flushing out of all your streams and waterways,” he said.
Samples were collected at those sites, as well as at the Anderson and Cranberry Run inlets, Wednesday for the eighth round of weekly testing.
Those results will be released today.
The health board initiated the 12-week testing program after previous testing, done in response to a massive fish kill in Lake Newport, found elevated levels of E. coli in the water.
The initial test results led Mill Creek MetroParks staff on July 10 to close the park’s waterways to the public.