By Kylee Sapp
Safe drinking water has become a growing concern across the country, as the water crisis in Flint, Mich., gains national attention. Since the city began getting water from the Flint River over a year ago, its residents have had limited access to clean water.
The reason behind the Flint water crisis is the city’s pipes, which are elevating the amount of lead in the water supply to unsafe levels. The persistence of this contamination has thrown the city into a state of emergency.
However, Maury Service Authority Director Jerry Higgins said that residents of Lexington and Rockbridge County do not need to worry about unsafe drinking water.
“We do not have that problem,” he said. “In my experience in the past, there has been no detectable lead in the water once it gets to the meter in home.”
The standard allowance for lead in drinking water is 15 parts per million, or ppm. Higgins said Lexington has consistently been in the four or five ppm range.
In December, the Maury Service Authority changed the chemical it had been using to treat Lexington and Rockbridge County’s drinking water from Alum, a traditional coagulant, to polyaluminum chloride, or PACl.
“It’s [Alum] done well in the past,” Higgins said. “When I got here I could see that the new chemical PACl would probably do a lot better. It’s not pH sensitive and does not rely so much on the alkalinity of the water.”
Higgins said the only change that residents might notice is a slight difference in taste.
The benefit to the change is at the water treatment plant, Higgins said. PACl is more cost-effective and causes much less sludge, a by-product of the water treatment process.
“The water molecule doesn’t adhere to the PACl, so there’s much less sludge,” Higgins said. “The clarity is better and it’s turning out to be easier to treat.”
Higgins also has a plan to address the brown water that the city experiences from time to time. The color is caused by iron residual in the water, but he believes he can reduce the iron content.
“All it amounts to is moving where we add the chlorine to the water,” he said. “I’d like to move that feed point.”
If the chlorine is fed into the water prior to reaching the filters, it will coat the sand grains that filter the water. As long as the chlorine residual is continuous, the coating will absorb the iron and manganese, making the water more clear.
“It becomes similar to a water softener, and the filter becomes an iron exchange unit, as long as you maintain a chlorine residual through it,” Higgins said. “I think it will do a great job.”
Although the brown water may be unpleasant to look at, unlike the water in Flint, it’s not dangerous to drink. However, it may stain clothes.
“Iron and manganese are the main culprits,” Higgins said. “They’re just basic minerals. It’s not unsafe at all.”