For most of the nearly 25,000 residential and commercial customers of City of Bloomington Utilities, the water still technically is safe to drink, Mayor John Hamilton said early Wednesday afternoon.
Though at least one of the utility's wholesale customers recently logged an average annual reading of disinfection byproducts — the result of certain disinfectants, including chlorine, interacting with organic and inorganic microorganisms — that was above a maximum limit set by environmental regulatory agencies at the state and federal levels, the system for which the city is directly responsible is in compliance with those standards.
But at one of the eight testing sites within city limits, Bloomington just barely avoided going over the maximum allowable levels of haloacetic acids — 60 parts per billion. All eight sites are still well within the allowable level for trihalomethanes, which is 80 parts per billion.
After the most recent testing in March, the testing site at Profile Parkway had a running annual average — the basis for the state and federal standards — of haloacetic acid levels of 60 parts per billion, just 0.1 parts per billion shy of a violation.
Rachel Atz, the city's water quality coordinator, said that was scraping by, by the "skin of our teeth, for sure," though she added levels of the acid tend to decrease during the summer while levels of trihalomethanes go up as levels of different organic materials in Lake Monroe fluctuate.
© 2024 HeraldTimesOnline, Bloomington, IN