Emporia Public Works Director Dean Grant says there was a lot of work behind the scenes to get the city’s boil water advisory lifted by Saturday night.
Early work had to do with repairs after two pipes broke at Emporia’s Water Treatment Plant early Tuesday — one on a fire hydrant and one on an abandoned line in the ozone injection room. This flooded the ozone injection pumps and some booster pumps at a time when the plant was struggling to handle higher turbidity, or cloudiness, in water coming from the Neosho River after 2-6 inches of rain fell Nov. 2-4. The city pumped out the water and replaced the booster pump motors. It also made a short-term change to a treatment chemical from a ferric chloride blend to a straight ferric chloride and raised the amount of chemicals being used.
Grant cautions the switch in coagulants is temporary, although it may be needed for much of this week.
In the meantime, Emporia’s rural water customers remain in boil water advisories until their water meets standards from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Emporia has offered free water testing to rural water districts as they work through their boil water advisories. The testing does not extend to RWD customers, so people with questions need to contact their rural water district.
8 pm Saturday: Boil water advisory rescinded for the city of Emporia; Advisory still in place for other affected areas
Emporia’s boil water advisory has been rescinded well ahead of original expectations.
The city of Emporia announced via a news release Saturday evening the advisory had been rescinded after laboratory results showed there was no signs of contamination in the city’s test samples submitted Friday evening. Normally two rounds of clear tests are required to lift an advisory and City Manager Trey Cocking had stated it could be Monday at the earliest before the advisory, in place since Tuesday, might be lifted.
Cocking tells KVOE News KDHE spoke with city leadership Friday and stated the city would be clear of the advisory so long as all 25 samples submitted in the first round of testing came back clear.
The rescinding of the advisory applies only to the city of Emporia. All other affected areas will have to do their own testing in order to be cleared.
Affected areas include:
*Olpe and, by extension, Hartford
*Lyon County RWD 1 including Allen, Admire and Americus
*Lyon County RWD 2 immediately west of Emporia into far west Chase County
*Lyon County RWD 3, including southwest Lyon County
*Lyon County RWD 4, including Neosho Rapids
*Lyon County RWD 5, including east-central and northeast Lyon County
*Coffey County RWD 2E, including customers in Lyon County
*Park Place Communities mobile park home located east of Emporia on US Highway 50
Cocking says the affected wholesale rural water district customers can now flush their systems. Emporia has offered free water testing to rural water districts as they work through their boil water advisories. The testing does not extend to RWD customers, so people with questions need to contact their rural water district.
Issues inside the Emporia Water Treatment Plant evidenced themselves late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, but they were set up by anywhere from 0.5-3 inches in and near the Neosho River Oct. 30, followed by 2-6 inches of rainfall across a wider area Nov. 2-4 and another 1-1.5 inches areawide Friday, including 1.2 inches at the KVOE studios. The result from the first two rainfalls was a significant increase in turbidity, or cloudiness in the water, that could not be filtered out until the problems were found and resolved.
