You Paid for It: Keeping our Water Safe
By: Tina Shively
Updated: February 1, 2013
You turn on the tap and water comes into your home.
However, the water you drink actually goes through many levels of purification before it comes out of the faucet.
Bob Morrison is the Director of the City of Rochester's Water Bureau. He says "We have very strict standards that we have to follow and we do hundreds of water tests annually...It is about keeping the water safe for our residents to drink".
A federal standard with a high price tag is now raising the bar when it comes to keeping water safe.
The program is called "The long term 2 enhanced surface water treatment rule" or LT2, and it will cost Rochester 23 million dollars to meet it.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put LT2 in place in 2006.
The rule will help water systems with open air reservoirs cut back on bacteria that could contaminate the water through birds, animals or even humans.
Cryptosporidium and Giardia are two of the most dangerous, because they could cause gastrointestinal illnesses.
"Under the right set of conditions those illnesses can lead to death if proper medical attention is not received by the individual."
Ken Naugle is an engineer with the Monroe County Health Department.
He says if those bacteria have sickened people in our area, the situation has not posed a public health threat.
"There are cases that appear from time to time but whether they are directly associated with drinking water illnesses we don't often know that answer. Individuals travel a lot and its often difficult to know where your point of contamination or your point of illness is determined from time to time".
The Rochester upgrades are broken into 3 phases.
The first phase includes installing a liner at the Highland Park reservoir.
Phase II will put a liner and floating cover on the reservoir at Rush.
Phase III will include the installation of an ultraviolet purification system at Highland Park, and at Cobbs Hill.
It's a costly project, but one the city will complete, to keep your family safe.
Morrison adds "The way we look at it is that there was a regulation that was enacted. Water is used to being under regulatory issues and we're used to dealing with them and we went forward when this regulation was put in place in order to follow the regulation".
The EPA says a total of 14 thousand water systems in the U.S. will upgrade to LT2 standards.
Like Rochester, the city of Portland, Oregon has had no documented problems with bacteria since they started testing for them in the 1990's.
The negative tests prompted them to question why they needed to upgrade their systems.
Edward Campbell is the Resource Protection and Planning Director at the Portland Water Bureau.
He says "In looking at the costs...we have a good case to make that we dont have crypto in our watershed, we definitely felt that we needed to challenge the rule and see if we could have success in the courts".
In 2006, Portland filed a legal challenge to LT2, and soon after, the federal appeals court in Washington D.C. denied it.
Upgrading their reservoirs could cost Portland 385 million dollars.
Bob Morrison says Rochester watched the Portland case in its early stages.
When Portland failed, Rochester decided to move forward with the 23 million dollar plan, the cheapest of nearly 100 options they considered.
However, the 23 million dollar price tag is not the final cost.
Morrison says the cost to ratepayers, people who get their water from the bureau, will be about 150 thousand dollars a year.
