Blackfoot mayor: ‘Boil advisory almost every six months is not acceptable to anybody’
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BLACKFOOT — Blackfoot’s mayor has issued a statement about the city’s boil advisory.
On Friday, officials warned residents living in the area not to drink the water without boiling it first.
On Monday, Marc Carroll wrote in a public memo posted to Facebook that this was the third boil advisory in 13 months. There were boil advisories on Oct. 28, 2021, April 21 this year, and most recently on Friday.
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“We certainly understand the impacts that this has on families and on businesses, and that a boil advisory almost every six months is not acceptable to anybody,” Carroll wrote.
In his memo, he said cities that provide drinking water are required by federal and state regulations to test the water and report the test results to the Department of Environmental Quality.
He said the city of Blackfoot is legally required to conduct 10 water samples each month.
Carroll wrote that contamination could come from environmental conditions such as wind, rain or snow. It can also come from faulty lawn sprinkler systems.
“We do experience most of the test failures in the spring, when sprinkler systems are turned on for the irrigation season, and during the fall when sprinklers are shut down, and the systems are blown out with compressors,” Carroll said.
In the current situation, samples taken Tuesday showed positive results for coliform.
Coliform is generally not harmful and usually comes from environmental sources in the soil. Coliforms are bacteria, some are found naturally in the environment, and some are found in fecal matter, which is E. coli.
Samples were taken again Thursday, and results given Friday afternoon included positive results for E. coli.
E. coli are bacteria whose presence indicates the water may be contaminated with human or animal waste.
The water department worked over the weekend to start the investigation and injected chlorine to clean the pipe system.
The next round of samples was taken Monday. Water samples are taken during the morning and transported to a testing laboratory in Pocatello. Test results are typically back between noon and 2 p.m. the next day.
“We must achieve two consecutive coliform-free tests in order to lift the boil advisory,” Carroll wrote.
Carroll said that after the last boil advisory in April, it was recommended to and accepted by City Council that the city of Blackfoot begin the engineering process to treat the water with automatic chlorination injection systems. The engineering is expected to be completed in December.
“We are planning that we will be treating the water system by June 2023. Our contacts at DEQ tell us that we are the only city of our size that is not treating its water. Blackfoot has been experiencing significant growth over the last several years,” Carroll wrote.