PARIS – The boil-water order for the Paris Utility District will continue at least another day and possibly through much of the week, officials said Monday.
The chlorine being pumped into the system has not reached the concentration that the state mandates to ensure the water is rid of E. coli bacteria. The bacteria, which indicates the water may have been contaminated with feces, was detected last week, prompting the state to issue a boil-water order for the district’s approximately 1,000 customers.
District Manager Steve Arnold said it has been difficult to raise the chlorine to the desired level – between .5 and 1 part per million – because the system has never been chlorinated.
And there’s a lot of water to reach.
“They have a 2.5 million gallon reservoir,” Nate Saunders of Maine’s Drinking Water Program said Monday. “That is a huge body of water to chlorinate, and that presents challenges.”
Since last Wednesday, the utility district has been pumping eight gallons of chlorine per day through the water system, including the reservoir, to sanitize it.
Arnold said the level of chlorine is between .2 parts per million in some areas, and around 2.2 parts per million elsewhere.
On Monday, several drinking water experts visited the utility district to devise the best way to chlorinate the system rapidly.
Arnold said the utility district has increased the amount of chlorine moving into the system every day to a little under 12 gallons. The district has begun pumping more water into the reservoir to hasten the chlorination process, Arnold said.
But the district has to be careful about how much chlorine it uses. If concentrations reach 4 parts per million, the state will issue a do-not-drink order, Saunders said.
“That is unlikely to happen, because they have been conservative about it,” Saunders said.
A typical chlorinated water system mostly ranges between .2 to .7 parts per million of chlorine, he added.
Once the chlorine has reached the state-mandated level in Paris, an 18- to 24-hour E. coli test can be taken. If this comes back clear, the state will lift the boil-water order.
Officials guessed this will likely take at least another two or three days.
Meanwhile, people are instructed to continue boiling tap water for at least five minutes before drinking it or using it in food preparation.
“It’s frustrating,” Peter Bickford, chairman of the Paris Utility Board of Trustees, said. “Once we found the situation was existing, we have gone by the book, by the recommendations. It just takes time.”
Officials still haven’t definitively pinpointed the cause of the contamination.
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