Southwest City's board of alderman were faced with an imminent issue of water contamination during the city council meeting on Thursday, March 14.
Public Works Director Shane Clark updated council members on the results of a recent, routine inspection of the public water system by Missouri Department of Natural Resources. He said that, during the inspection on Wednesday, Feb. 27, a special source water sample was collected from the city's second well. This tested positive for E. coli. A special sample taken from the distribution system at this time was determined to be safe.
The next week, on Thursday, March 6, five additional source samples were collected. Four of those five samples were found to have E. coli bacteria in them.
Clark explained that the city currently voluntarily chlorinates, has detention and is maintaining sufficient chlorine residual to provide for disinfection but, due to the source water being contaminated, voluntary disinfection is now mandatory.
"We're taking care of the problem, we just didn't know we had a problem," Clark said. "The water is treated, safe, you can drink it, but there's no margin for error. We need to update the disinfection system so that we never run out of chlorine."
Clark must manually monitor chlorine levels in the water system every four hours, each day until the equipment is updated.
Council members have three options: continue chlorinating to kill the bacteria, identify and resolve the contamination source or dig a new well.
Clark noted that, since the city has two wells, DNR recommends against stopping the use of the well until a plan of action is in place. He provided the council with estimated costs of a dual switch-over system that would continually chlorinate, a chlorine monitor, a chart reporter, and an auto-dialer to notify personnel of contamination -- as suggested by DNR. Ozark Water Solutions estimated costs of $11,550.
"Let's dive in and get it under control, then we can begin seeking out the problem," said Mayor David Blake.
The council voted to purchase the necessary equipment.
Blake also spoke about possible grant assistance and compared the cost of repairing the well to the cost of relocating the well.
In other business, the council:
• Received a reserve officer application from Levi Tucker and agreed to interview him;
• Heard from Assistant Clerk Danielle Smith regarding her recent farmer's market training;
• Voted to sponsor $500 towards Joyce Morris' beautification of city landscapes.
General News on 03/21/2019