FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2018 12:00 PM
Dan McIntosh,
SIRWA General Manager and Creston Water Works Treatment Plant Manager
For more information call:
SIRWA
641-782-5744
SOUTHERN IOWA RURAL WATER ASSOCIATION
Drinking Water Warning Status
We now have the following cities released from the Drinking Water Advisory:
• Creston
• Lenox
• Diagonal
• Afton
We flushed and have submitted samples to our lab in Storm Lake on Monday June 11, for the following areas:
- 050 – Highland Rural Area
- 053 – Clearfield Rural Area
- 060 – City of Cromwell
- 061 – City of Kent
- 062 – Spaulding Rural Area
- 089 – City of Clearfield
The areas above that we have taken the samples for are not safe to drink until we receive the sample results back from the lab and get IDNR approval. We should have those results late Tuesday afternoon or early evening. On the SIRWA web site, www.sirwa.org, you will see a link under “Drinking Water Warning” called “Cities and Areas Released”. As cities and/or rural areas are released, they will be listed under this link.
We have flushed our large distribution mains and we now have good water to our points of delivery for the Cities of Murray, Mt Ayr and Bedford. The Water Works Staff for these cities are now flushing and will be taking health samples today or tomorrow so the Drinking Water Advisory can be lifted in each of these cities when the results are available. We are in hopes good water for the City of Kellerton will be there late today or very early tomorrow, so they can begin the flushing and sampling protocol for their city.
Of the 28 water towers SIRWA must drain and refill with the new water, 18 are completed. Four are being drained right now and the remaining six towers do not have the new water down to them yet. We are in hopes to have all towers drained within the next few days.
We are currently flushing in northern Union, southeast Adair and southwest Madison counties as well as many other parts of our system. The SIRWA Staff is confident we will have the Drinking Water Advisory lifted by the end of the week of June 18th. As with all tasks such as this, someone is first and unfortunately someone is last. We are doing our best to make sure the time between first and last is as short as possible.
The 12-Mile Treatment Plant, although not running at full capacity, is operating well. We are seeing a few problems with the membranes needing more repair than normal, but much of this can be attributed to operating them a near their maximum output twenty-four hours per day. As a precaution, we have switched back to 12-Mile Lake instead of 3-Mile Lake. The problems with the membranes happened after we switched to 3-Mile Lake on May 1st. More samples of each lake are being taken today and delivered to the lab to be analyzed again.
Suez, the supplier of the membranes has been doing everything they can to help out. We currently have Craig, a Field Service Representative from Suez, at the treatment plant working with us every day. This is his second week at the plant and he will be here at least two more weeks. Jim Emory and Derek Senior, both Senior Product Managers for Suez will be arriving at the plant tomorrow (Wednesday) to look over the situation.
We received confirmation that a semi with a partial shipment of membrane modules is on its way from Canada. We will have these membranes installed as soon as they get here. The additional membranes will give the 12-Mile Treatment Plant the ability to have four tranes to rely on instead of three. Our overall treatment capacity will increase, and we will not be working the membranes currently installed nearly as hard as we are now.
If you are a SIRWA customer, you may contact the office at 641-782-5744 or send an email to info@sirwa.org.
If you are a City of Creston Water Works (CCWW) customer, please contact them to be added to their list for future notifications at 641-782-5817 or e-mail at officeww@iowatelecom.net.
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our customers. Please stay tuned to your local newspapers, radio and television stations, and our website at www.sirwa.org for further updates.