Saturday, June 23, 2018
Staff report
STRUTHERS
Some Struthers residents were alarmed Friday after receiving a notice from Aqua Ohio about a water monitoring failure in January, but the company says there’s no threat to public health and that customers shouldn’t be concerned over the water.
The letter, which was included with customers’ water bills, said “the January 2018 source water sample for cryptosporidium, E. Coli counts, and turbidity were not monitored in the time frame allowed. ... We are required to collect these samples to determine if additional treatment of our source water is necessary. Although this incident was not an emergency, as our customers, you have a right to know what happened and what we did to correct this situation.”
The letter went on to say that boiling or further corrective action by customers was unnecessary.
Tom Schwing, Aqua Ohio’s environmental compliance manager, said there was no threat to the public, and that the monitoring failure happened at the raw water stage — the water directly from Lake Evans — but was checked and monitored during its treatment phase.
Struthers residents get their water from Lake Evans, but that water is treated like any other drinking water. The monitoring failure happened before the treatment, so any contaminants or other harmful substances would have been eliminated during the treatment process.
The letter from Aqua Ohio said it would add additional samples to its monthly testing to make up for its missed tests in January.