Cure for water woes may rival the disease
Cure for water woes may rival the disease
By Lorraine AhearnStaff Writer Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 3:00 am
Read On Cure for water woes may rival the disease
Don't drink the water, warned the automated message last weekend from their community well water provider, unless you boil it first. And though Roy and Mary Cannap have for years lived in the wooded, 500-home neighborhood topped by a sky-blue water tower in the shape of a golf ball on a tee, they never got the message.
So Roy went on drinking the tap water for the next five days, noticing he kept getting headaches — rare, for him — and stomachaches. Was it the flu, he wondered?
That's when his wife spotted a story about a "boil" advisory in their neighborhood because of possible bacteria in the community well.
"I think calling people was a good thing," Mary Cannap said, "but we got a new phone number two years ago, and they couldn't reach us."
By Friday, a week after well water company Carolina Water Service found the possible contamination, the advisory had been lifted, the water was back on, and Roy Cannap was feeling fine.
The only problem was, the tap water now smelled like chlorine — lots of chlorine — after a shock treatment to make sure the bacteria was gone. And there you have the paradox, which applies to all of us city water drinkers, as well. In order to purify water enough that it won't make us sick, how many chemicals do we meanwhile ingest?
And not just any chemicals, but the same ones that, when you put them in your swimming pool, have a skull and crossbones on the label?
"The environment has gotten so bad that nature can't clean itself anymore," Cannap said. "You've got to put enough chlorine in there to kill anything. Enough to kill a hog, if one fell in."
If that's what it takes to supply 500 homes, how tricky a task is it to purify water for a city the size of Greensboro? Consider the monthly water quality reports the city publishes, taking three dozen readings, from arsenic to zinc, on the raw water drawn from lakes Townsend and Brandt, and the finished product.
The treatment is adjusted by season as well as lake levels. Right now, intakes where water is drawn from the lakes are 8 feet lower than usual, that much closer to mud and silt.
"The deeper the lake, anything that's heavy has more of an opportunity to settle out," said Marie Shander, lab supervisor at the Mitchell Water Treatment plant at Benjamin Parkway and Battleground Avenue. "When the concentrations of contaminants are higher, we have to throw more chemicals at it, and it costs more."
How much is allowed — of chlorine, for instance, or the alternative chlorine-ammonia disinfectant "chloramine" — is regulated by the EPA.
What's less clear is the long-term effects of the complicated cocktail of chemicals in city water, including anticorrosives, fluoride, floculants and substances such as soda ash, sometimes used to adjust pH levels.
That's mouthful enough to explain what SoftRain dealer Michelle Heavener was drinking Friday at her office, a few miles from the Abington subdivision. It was a plastic bottle with her own label: Triad Water Treatment Co.
"That's the house brand," said husband Dan Heavener, "and when we travel, we drink Dasani or Le Bleu. We're not doctors. Let's just say it tastes better and it's better on your plumbing."
A plumber and second-generation filtration installer, he said that 20 years ago customers looked perplexed when he asked them the question that begins each service call:
How much bottled water do you buy?
"The answer would be, 'Why would I buy water? I'm already paying for it,' " Heavener said. "Today, everybody drinks bottled water."
Equally telling is that almost half the customers who now invest in water filtering systems, which remove chlorine as well as "free floaters" including heavy metals, are already hooked up to municipal water.
Even the most devoted public health ambassadors, whose mission is to protect the good of the many, recognize the paradox.
"What do I do at home?" mused Alyson Best, one of the environmental health managers for the Guilford County Health Department."I put a Brita (water filter) on the counter, and that's what we drink. It removes any lead, and I don't smell the chlorine. It tastes better, too."
Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com
By Lorraine AhearnStaff Writer Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 3:00 am
Read On Cure for water woes may rival the disease
Don't drink the water, warned the automated message last weekend from their community well water provider, unless you boil it first. And though Roy and Mary Cannap have for years lived in the wooded, 500-home neighborhood topped by a sky-blue water tower in the shape of a golf ball on a tee, they never got the message.
So Roy went on drinking the tap water for the next five days, noticing he kept getting headaches — rare, for him — and stomachaches. Was it the flu, he wondered?
That's when his wife spotted a story about a "boil" advisory in their neighborhood because of possible bacteria in the community well.
"I think calling people was a good thing," Mary Cannap said, "but we got a new phone number two years ago, and they couldn't reach us."
By Friday, a week after well water company Carolina Water Service found the possible contamination, the advisory had been lifted, the water was back on, and Roy Cannap was feeling fine.
The only problem was, the tap water now smelled like chlorine — lots of chlorine — after a shock treatment to make sure the bacteria was gone. And there you have the paradox, which applies to all of us city water drinkers, as well. In order to purify water enough that it won't make us sick, how many chemicals do we meanwhile ingest?
And not just any chemicals, but the same ones that, when you put them in your swimming pool, have a skull and crossbones on the label?
"The environment has gotten so bad that nature can't clean itself anymore," Cannap said. "You've got to put enough chlorine in there to kill anything. Enough to kill a hog, if one fell in."
If that's what it takes to supply 500 homes, how tricky a task is it to purify water for a city the size of Greensboro? Consider the monthly water quality reports the city publishes, taking three dozen readings, from arsenic to zinc, on the raw water drawn from lakes Townsend and Brandt, and the finished product.
The treatment is adjusted by season as well as lake levels. Right now, intakes where water is drawn from the lakes are 8 feet lower than usual, that much closer to mud and silt.
"The deeper the lake, anything that's heavy has more of an opportunity to settle out," said Marie Shander, lab supervisor at the Mitchell Water Treatment plant at Benjamin Parkway and Battleground Avenue. "When the concentrations of contaminants are higher, we have to throw more chemicals at it, and it costs more."
How much is allowed — of chlorine, for instance, or the alternative chlorine-ammonia disinfectant "chloramine" — is regulated by the EPA.
What's less clear is the long-term effects of the complicated cocktail of chemicals in city water, including anticorrosives, fluoride, floculants and substances such as soda ash, sometimes used to adjust pH levels.
That's mouthful enough to explain what SoftRain dealer Michelle Heavener was drinking Friday at her office, a few miles from the Abington subdivision. It was a plastic bottle with her own label: Triad Water Treatment Co.
"That's the house brand," said husband Dan Heavener, "and when we travel, we drink Dasani or Le Bleu. We're not doctors. Let's just say it tastes better and it's better on your plumbing."
A plumber and second-generation filtration installer, he said that 20 years ago customers looked perplexed when he asked them the question that begins each service call:
How much bottled water do you buy?
"The answer would be, 'Why would I buy water? I'm already paying for it,' " Heavener said. "Today, everybody drinks bottled water."
Equally telling is that almost half the customers who now invest in water filtering systems, which remove chlorine as well as "free floaters" including heavy metals, are already hooked up to municipal water.
Even the most devoted public health ambassadors, whose mission is to protect the good of the many, recognize the paradox.
"What do I do at home?" mused Alyson Best, one of the environmental health managers for the Guilford County Health Department."I put a Brita (water filter) on the counter, and that's what we drink. It removes any lead, and I don't smell the chlorine. It tastes better, too."
Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com
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