City's drinking water source vulnerable to contamination
News-Sentinel photo by Steve Linsenmayer
Filtration Plant
Fort Wayne draws its drinking water from the St. Joseph River at this pump station just above the dam at Johnny Appleseed Park. Two 42-inch underground pipes carry the river to the Three Rivers Filtration Plant downtown.
By KEVIN KILBANE of The News-Sentinel
In
March 1990, a fatal traffic accident sent a truck crashing through the railing
on the Coliseum Boulevard bridge and into the St. Joseph River.
The truck, its fuel tanks filled with diesel, came to rest on the river bottom. The cab laid only a few yards from the pipes that siphon 34 million gallons of river water each day for processing into Fort Wayne's drinking water.
Luckily, the truck leaked only 200 to 300 gallons of fuel, and city workers shut down the water intake before contamination occurred. But the accident highlights how quickly and easily Fort Wayne's water supply can be put at risk.
"Losing the St. Joseph River because of a major crisis would be a calamity," acknowledged Greg Meszaros, City Utilities' associate director. But Meszaros said the current system, while not perfect, can take a punch.
In an emergency, the City Utilities' water treatment and distribution system can keep water flowing to city homes for 24 to 36 hours without drawing any water from the river.
"If there is a problem," Meszaros added, "we can let it pass downstream."
During such a shutdown, Meszaros said the city would pump treated water from a 20 million-gallon storage tank located under the Three Rivers Filtration Plant. The plant overlooks the downtown confluence where the St. Joseph and St. Marys rivers form the Maumee River.
Meszaros said above-ground tanks at six locations around the city store another 10 million gallons of treated water. The city normally uses the tanks to maintain water pressure and supply during high-demand times.
If contamination did force the city to shut down its water-intake pipes in the St. Joseph, Meszaros said the filtration plant could activate an emergency intake system on its grounds downtown or at Hosey Dam, where the Maumee River passes beneath Anthony Boulevard.
Because of the St. Joseph's vulnerability as a drinking water source, Meszaros said the city has begun exploring other ways to keep residents supplied with water during an emergency.
A five-year capital spending plan includes studying how City Utilities could supply water using Cedarville and Hurshtown reservoirs, located north of Fort Wayne in the Leo-Grabill area. Cedarville Reservoir holds about 550 million gallons of water; Hurshtown Reservoir contains about 1.5 billion gallons.
Presently, the city has to send water from both reservoirs down the St. Joseph River to get it to the filtration plant.
News-Sentinel photo by Steve Linsenmayer
Hurshtown Reservoir
City Utilities planners are looking at ways to draw water directly from the 1.5 billion-gallon Hurshtown Reservoir near Grabill in the event of contaimination of the St. Joseph River.
Meszaros
said the city also will investigate doubling the underground storage capacity
at the Three Rivers Filtration Plant to 40 million gallons. That project would
cost an estimated $15 million-$20 million.
City
officials also have talked about using wells as a backup water source. Fort Wayne
originally pumped its water from wells, but switched to the St. Joseph River in
1933 because the wells could not keep up with the city's needs.
All of those measures, however, would be short-term solutions, Meszaros cautioned.
"You'll never see a day that the river isn't part of our water supply," he said. "We don't have the capacity for the river not to be part of our water equation."
What's in your drinking water this week?
Call City Utilities' Water Quality Hotline at 424-1414, Ext. 1174. The Three Rivers Filtration Plant updates the line each week. The recorded message reports these findings about treated water:
* Turbidity: This measure of drinking water's cloudiness also indicates whether disease-causing organisms could escape disinfection. The Environmental Protection Agency limits cloudiness to 0.5 Nephelometric Turbidity Units, or NTU, but the filtration plant tries to keep turbidity below 0.1 NTU.
* Taste and odor: Filters remove most odd tastes and odors caused by leaves and other organic material washed into the river. Filtration plant workers try maintaining a Flavor Profile Analysis reading of 6 or lower.
* Atrazine: The filtration plant regularly tests for this farm weedkiller, which the EPA considers a possible cause of cancer. Atrex, Bicep and Harness Extra are brand names of herbicides that contain atrazine. The EPA limits atrazine in drinking water to an annual daily average of 3 parts per billion. Levels may spike higher than that standard on some days during spring, when
farmers are applying atrazine and rains are more likely to wash it into streams. Plant officials say the levels have never approached the EPA's one- to 10-day exposure limit of 100 parts per billion.
* Cryptosporidium and giardia: These microorganisms cause flulike symptoms and can be dangerous for young children, older adults and people with weakened immune systems. Filtration plant personnel try to filter out and chlorinate these microbes during drinking water processing. Since the plant began monthly testing in October 1994, no giardia or cryptosporidium have been found in treated water.
Bacteria levels
To check whether the St. Joseph, St. Marys and Maumee rivers are safe for recreational use, call Fort Wayne's Combined Sewer Overflow hot line at 424-1414, Ext. 1129.
The hot line provides bacteria counts for two locations along each river. Water is considered unsafe for swimming or full-body contact if bacteria counts measure more than 235 organisms per 100 milli- liters of water. Bacteria counts frequently exceed those limits.
Source: Fort Wayne City Utilities' "Handbook on Drinking Water"; Chet Shastri,
filtration plant program manager; and city Water Pollution Control Plant.
