After one of the communal wells in Raspberry Falls was closed down again on Tuesday following a spike in fecal coliform bacteria—bacteria associated with human or animal waste—Supervisor Sally Kurtz (D-Catoctin) held a meeting Wednesday with residents and officials from Loudoun Water, the Loudoun County Health Department, the state health department’s Office of Drinking Water, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Loudoun County planning commission.
Officials assured residents that the water that reaches their homes is perfectly safe and that the contamination was found in the community’s raw water source before it was treated.
Samples taken from Well 1 on Sunday found that levels of fecal coliform bacteria in the raw water were as high as 200 counts per 100 milliliters. It is Loudoun Water’s protocol to close the well if levels exceed 100 counts per 100 milliliters as a precautionary measure. The same well had to be shut down in May. This time around, residents were upset that during the time it took from Sunday to Tuesday to get the results back, their water was still being pumped from the well before it was turned off.
When there is a spike in fecal coliform bacteria, Loudoun Water treats the water by adding more chlorine, which should kill it. Some residents are afraid that merely chlorinating the water will not treat all of the bacteria.
“When the spikes are exceeding 200 [counts per 100 milliliters], should we have blind faith in chlorination?” asked Raspberry Falls resident Scott Lutz.
Bacteria levels have been so high that a child in Raspberry Falls was hospitalized for five days and almost lost his vision after playing in a bacteria-laden stream in the community. The bacterium responsible is called aeromonas, which is resistant to chlorine, refrigeration or cold temperatures. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), aeromonas infections are typically acquired through two routes, either through ingestion or through exposure of open wounds.
Bacteria levels that were found were not uncommon for any stream, said a DEQ official.
Conducting Tests
There is a predictability that there will be an increase in bacteria found in the raw water after wet events, as the coliform bacteria from surface water is washed into the ground water, said Todd Danielson, Loudoun Water’s Community Systems Manager. The approximate crest in bacteria after a rain event is 10 days, which is about how long ago there was heavy rain in Loudoun.
Although it seems there is a correlation between wet events and higher bacteria levels, Bob Edelman, a district engineer with the Office of Drinking Water, said again and again that the water in Raspberry Falls is not under the influence of surface water, which the office had been testing.
“People are reacting to seeing E. coli repeatedly,” Edelman said. “The EPA’s [Environmental Protection Agency] ground water rules do not include E. coli.”
If the ground water was under direct influence of surface water, it would be termed GUDI. GUDI sources are defined as any water beneath the surface of the ground with significant occurrence of insects, macroorganisms, algae, or large diameter pathogens such as giardia lamblia or cryptosporidium.
“Our GUDI determination policy must be altered to avoid making a GUDI determination based solely upon the confirmed presence of E. coli,” said a May 2008 memo from the Office of Drinking Water. However, that same memo gives details about testing for E. coli when determining if a source is GUDI, just not as the only indicator of being under the influence. The tests also look at the physical changes in water turbidity, pH, conductivity and temperature.
“We are completely unsatisfied with the testing,” said a resident who wants the Office of Drinking Water to look at E. coli in relation to the influence of surface water.
Edelman said that the Office of Drinking Water has made its decision and that the water is not GUDI.
“Would you drink our water?” one of the residents fired back.
“Of course,” Edelman responded.
While the Office of Drinking Water did not test for E. coli to determine if the ground water is GUDI, the Department of Environmental Quality does test for E. coli in the limestone watershed.
DEQ’s total maximum daily load (TMDL) tests are run only for E. coli in this area because it does not have the budget to monitor for every single pathogen, said a DEQ official. E. coli is an indicator pathogen, so its presence can signal a greater contamination problem, she said.
“To us, there’s feces in our water, coming from every source, as confirmed by [Loudoun Water’s] source tracking; there’s algae that if it was one part higher, we’d be GUDI. We’re always this close. Thirty wells have been drilled. Right now, we only have one well working,” said Holly Krauss, a Raspberry Falls resident.
Experimenting for a Solution
The residents and officials discussed future plans for remedying the contamination problem. Danielson said the three major options that Loudoun Water is examining are to replace Well 1, which is the well most frequently contaminated, using a sand filtration system or installing a membrane treatment system, the options listed in increasing cost. The Loudoun Water board has not fully decided which course to take, Danielson said.
Residents are concerned that replacing the well is not going to fix the problems and that they would just continue to see contamination. They said that $150,000 has already been spent to identify and drill Well F, which would be the replacement well, and that they are unhappy footing such a large bill for an experimental solution.
“We’ve spent [$150,000] to locate Well F,” Krauss said. “What if Well F fails?”
“If Well F fails, we’ll go on to treatment,” Danielson said.
“I just paid the highest water bill of my life, especially when you look at the budget because of all the man hours spent on our water,” said another resident. He expressed frustration that with this high cost, he still was not confident in the safety of his water.
In Raspberry Falls last year alone, Loudoun Water spent $17,500 conducting tests, with about $95,000 of labor associated with it, Danielson said. The test costs for 2007 ran approximately $5,000, less than a third of the cost of what was spent last year. Though the costs have run high, there is still no permanent solution in place.
“They’re taking a Band-Aid approach to fixing the problem. They can’t guarantee the new well won’t be subject to contamination,” a resident said.
“Currently, we’re paying a fortune for marginal water. You’re [Loudoun Water] spending an exorbitant amount of money to tell us our water is safe when it looks like it’s getting worse,” said another resident.
Looking to the Future
Many communities are being placed on a communal well system like the one in Raspberry Falls. Loudoun Water is pooling the expenses of all of the communal wells and dividing it evenly among the participating communities.
“As one of 600 homeowners that bears the brunt [of the costs], we shouldn’t be paying for this experimentation,” said resident Paul Krauss. “We didn’t choose to be put on a community well system; we just happened to move into an area that has it. Now we’re paying for all of these communities.”
“The tremendous effort to make sure we have safe water comes with a very high cost,” Krauss continued. “These communal well systems will cost a lot of money and will still be unpredictable.”
Kurtz thought that in terms of public health, it was safer to put communities on a communal well system instead of having private wells so that someone managed and maintained the wells regularly.
Residents and officials discussed the possibility of bringing central water to the Leesburg communities, which many saw as unlikely. The water would have to come from the Leesburg central water, bringing up political effects like annexing, officials said. There are also environmental impacts of putting in new water lines, like sinkholes and blasting bedrock.
The mayor of Leesburg did not express interest in expanding their public water, Kurtz said.
The next step is to look at the different options Loudoun Water is considering – replacing the well, sand filtration or a membrane treatment system – and to schedule community meetings with residents and the developer to decide the best way to proceed, Danielson said.
However, some residents are concerned about taking a community vote when many community members are not as acquainted with the issue, which some attribute to the lack of communication from Loudoun Water. They fear that the communication the residents have received has included a great deal of spin, and that uninformed residents do not know the extent of the contamination problem.
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