A routine test by the New York State Department of Health found higher than average levels of contaminants in water provided by the Saratoga County Water Authority to the Town of Ballston, according to Chairman Jack Lawler.
“There’s a test the state DOH requires which measures the quality of the water. We have to have a rolling one year average of .06 percent or less and our average was .07 percent, a very minor exceedance,” said Lawler.
A large part of the problem that led to increased contaminant levels is likely the fact that Ballston only uses about 2.5 million gallons a day out of the 10 million gallons available.
“There has been some increases in byproducts of a combination of organic chemicals and chlorination and they increase based on the amount of time water sits in the system,” said Ballston Supervisor Patti Southworth. “There’s such a low usage of water in the system at this point.”
The town also gets water from Glenville (Southworth said this could be used as an alternative water source if need be) which is why it’s not using the full capacity from Saratoga County Water Authority.
Once GlobalFoundries goes on-line and starts taking water from the county, the problem will be greatly alleviated, said Lawler.
“We’re putting water in the pipe but water is staying in the pipe longer than ever intended and the longer the water is in the pipe, that’s when the chlorine starts to break down,” said Lawler. “Once we’re moving [more] gallons through a day, that will certainly go a long way toward solving the problem.”
Lawler said the DOH test, which is relatively new since 2006, is posing a growing problem for water systems because simple things like excess rain can cause contaminant levels to exceed the state limit.
“[It’s] a growing problem for many water systems to stay under the .06 limit. Things like rain can impact this. If you’re taking water from the river, the surface of the water, if you have high turbidity due to rain (it’s been a record year for rainfall in New York) more organic material gets washed into the river as the rain water flows into the river,” said Lawler.
The water temperature can also be a factor, said Lawler.
Residents need not fear, though, because there is no threat to health and safety, said Lawler.
“It’s not a short-term threat to anybody. It’s not an issue of water quality or long-term damage to anybody,” said Lawler. “The water is safe to drink.”
The Saratoga County Water Authority is now required to take steps to fix the problem and Lawler said the DOH has agreed to help find a solution.
“On a short-term basis, we still need to deal with how we’re treating the water, adding some different chemicals to the water to try to limit the problem,” said Lawler. “We’re looking at different filtering to hopefully take more organic materials out of the water. Those are what we’re testing right now.”
Southworth said she was impressed and pleased with the water authority’s response to the issue.
“It was really encouraging to see how proactive [Lawler] was being about resolving the issues,” said Southworth. “…Everyone is on the same page and we have to work together to solve the problem and obviously the water authority is very aware they have to provide us with safe, quality water.”
Water quality regulations are expected to become even more stringent in 2013, said Lawler, so the Saratoga County Water Authority is already looking for ways to comply.
“The state is constantly increasing the regulations we all operate under. What we’re looking at now is the impact of complying with those regulations in 2013 and starting to plan toward that,” said Lawler.
Lawler said the water authority will most likely bring a consultant on board to plan how best to address future changes.
