Joplin blue water fixed

A water ban has been lifted in Joplin after a notice was issued to residents of Joplin Friday urging them not to use their water after a report claimed there was blue-colored water that had a bad odor.

Liberty County Commissioner Larry Hendrickson said the ban has since been lifted by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

“It was lifted on Saturday upon chemical analysis of the water which shows no chemicals at harmful levels,” he said. “Everything was mitigated, and everything's fine and the water’s been cleared by DEQ.”

Hendrickson also said the residents of Joplin were the only ones affected by this and that nobody knows what exactly caused the issues with the water.

“Nobody has any idea. There was a valve that was replaced on the main line,” he said.

Cherie Moss, a Joplin resident, said the first time she received notice of the issue was Friday.

Moss said she started noticing changes in the water before she received notices.

“On Wednesday, I believe, I had brown water — a lot of rust and dirt, I never saw the blue water,” she said. “I thought it (had) a sewery smell to it.”

Moss also said that it does not make sense how blue water could be an issue due to an issue with the line.

“I understand how you get rust and dirt out of a break in the line, but I still don’t understand how you get blue water,” she said. “For the past few weeks I’ve had a really bad sewer smell in my house to the point that I was going to call a plumber, and now that this is all fixed — it’s gone.”

Officials of the Hill County Water District, which serves Joplin even though the community is in Liberty County, and Montana DEQ did not respond to phone messages seeking comment by printing deadline this morning.