Residents Again Boiling Their Water
About 2,000 Dalton Gardens residents are boiling their water because of unsafe levels of coliform bacteria, a repeat of a problem the community had a year ago.
No fecal coliform has been found, which is a much more serious contamination problem.
This is the fourth incident of coliform bacteria contamination in the past two months involving local drinking water systems, said Tony Davis of the Idaho Division of Environmental Quality. In September, some customers of the Green Ferry Water and Sewer District were told to boil water for drinking and cooking.
Rathdrum and the Hidden Valley Water Association - located between Rathdrum and Hauser Lake - also have had coliform problems.
“All of them have older water mains, all are unchlorinated, and all of them have been operating for a long time without problems,” Davis said. “All but Hidden Valley have lots of construction.”
Construction can mean a break in the line or that someone improperly taps a water line, allowing dirt and coliform to enter the system. Coliform itself isn’t a problem, but it is an indication of other bacteria that can cause illness, Davis said.
This is an unusual number of coliform problems. The number probably will continue to grow as long as many of the 100-plus water systems in Kootenai County decide against chlorinating or otherwise disinfecting their water, Davis said.
That can mean long interruptions in water service while lines are flushed and contamination sources hunted.
Dalton Gardens has been advising its residents to boil water since Monday and won’t change that until the lines and the city water reservoir are flushed with chlorine. That will take another two to three days at a minimum.
“With an unchlorinated water system, it’s hard to pinpoint the source,” Davis said. “There’s no protection between the random contaminants from any number of sources and the public.”
People in the 34 households served by the Hidden Valley Water Association recently had to boil water for two months because of a still unexplained contamination problem. That prompted the water association to decide to regularly disinfect the water with chlorine, Davis said.
Not all water systems are willing to add disinfectant. Last year, when Dalton Gardens had problems with coliform contamination, the city flushed the lines with chlorine to kill the bacteria. That caused an uproar among water customers who don’t want anything added to their drinking water, Davis said.
Dalton Gardens officials and DEQ officials have unsuccessfully searched for an explanation for the contamination that seems to reappear this time of year. The city has both a drinking water supply system and an irrigation supply system.
The drinking water comes from wells on Prairie Avenue. The irrigation water is drawn from Hayden Lake.
Somewhere in Dalton Gardens there could be a connection between a home sprinkler system and the drinking water system, Davis said. The contamination problem could be occurring because people are blowing the water out of their sprinkler lines in preparation for winter and forcing irrigation water into a drinking water line.
, DataTimes