City Council has three-hour session discussion boil advisory

Havre City Council held a lengthy discussion to an over-flow capacity crowd at its meeting Monday about the boil advisory in place in the city.

At the end of the meeting, following a presentation by a worker at the water plant that met with extended applause, the council scheduled another meeting Monday, May 20, to debrief over what was said at this week"'s meeting and what answers had been found to questions people asked this week.

Havre Department of Public Works Director Trevor Mork said during Monday's meeting that the city already is taking advised action, flushing the city water lines and increasing treatment at the water plant, with much more planning and action in place to reduce the chance of what is going in Havre having to happen again.

He said that he met with Montana Department of Environmental Quality last Friday and they agreed, in an abundance of caution, to continue with the water boil advisory for at least two more weeks.

The city issued the boil advisory - it is not a boil order or do-not-use order - after three cases of Giardiasis, a disease generally causing severe diarrhea and other symptoms, although it sometimes causes no symptoms, were reported in the first quarter of this year. Havre has a five-year average of one case a year.

As it is a water-borne illness and the precise source of the cases this year still has not been identified, the city issued the advisory to let people know that the parasite that carries the disease could be present and people may want to boil their city water for at least a minute before consuming it or they could use bottled water.

Several people asked why the city was not providing water to the residents.

Mork and Mayor Doug Kaercher said the city has not declared an emergency, just issued an advisory, so providing water is not required.

He also noted that the water treatment plant is not tax-funded, but runs exclusively off fees paid by users, and if the city started buying water to replace it the source still would come from the taxes of city residents.

"The water system belongs to you," he said.

Several people took offense when Kaercher said the city is working to solve the problem and it would not turn into another Flint, Michigan, with audience members saying Kaercher never should have made that comparison.

When several people talked about the difficulty on buying so much water from the store, Kaercher said an alternative is to boil the city water and use it.

Several people who spoke also said not everyone is following the advisory.

It is not a requirement, just an advisory as an abundance of precaution, the city officials said.

Business impacts

Others talked about a do-not use order issued by the county sanitarian, and how it is crippling businesses, such as restaurants, bars and coffee shops, costing them thousands of dollars a week or even a day in sales, and could take some out of business. They asked why businesses were being told they cannot use the water while the city is issuing an advisory.

Kaercher said those orders came from the county sanitarian, not the city, and the city does not know why he issued a stronger order.

Hill County Health Officer Kim Berg said this morning that licensed establishments that serve the public must be held to a higher standard.

"Ensuring that our licensed establishments using the City of Havre Public Water Supply, who serve hundreds of people a day, some of whom come from out of our area and are not aware of the recent water advisory is a large part of what we must do by law," Berg said. "When it comes to licensed establishments, when there is a possible issue with water, that is considered a water emergency and it is recommended that they immediately stop using that water source until it is back within standards. The potential of a large outbreak is much higher at an establishment that serves hundreds of people, and we must do our best to mitigate that threat.

"If a licensed establishment chose to continue to use a possibly contaminated water source and an outbreak was linked to their establishment, the cost of that would be very high to them and to the community," Berg added. "We do not want to see this happen to the local businesses or our community.

"We recognize the current situation is causing a financial hardship for many local businesses at this time and we hope we can soon move forward from the Boil Water Advisory," she continued.

Cause of the boil order

Mork said several issues had led to a previous health advisory before the water boil advisory was issued.

This year has seen several runoff events that have led to high levels of turbidity - sediment - in the Milk River, from which Havre gets its water, he said.

He said early in February, the water plant briefly went below the required standard in its level or time of treatment, which should have been immediately reported to DEQ. In fact, he said, the city found out in March that it should be reporting daily rather than a monthly summary as it had been doing.

He said none of the certified plant operators, some of whom have been working at the Havre plant for five years or more, had been told of that reporting requirement.

He said that, in late February, a high level of unidentified material came out of the river into the plant. The operators immediately shut down so none of the water went into the distribution system. That was what led to the health advisory, he said, although no contamination was identified the system.

In March, DEQ notified the city it had failed to follow the required daily reporting.

Then, after the higher-than-normal level of Giardia cases were confirmed, the city, state and EPA conferred and determined the boil order should be put in place, which it was April 19.

When audience members asked if the boil advisory was impacting members of the council, they replied that they are residents of the city and it is impacting them the same as every resident.

Council member Lindsay Ratliff said she has a small child at home and has been boiling water since the advisory went into effect.

Apparent lack of communication

Several people complained about what appeared to be a lack of communication, between the city and the county, between the city and the state and between the city and its residents.

Several people said they were not satisfied with how the city notified people about the boil order and that it should have been mailed to water users, with others saying it should have been posted at the bulk water station as well, for people who use city water through that source.

Kaercher said that as soon as the advisory was finalized, with the city waiting for exact wording from the DEQ, it was released to the newspaper, the New Media Broadcasting radio stations, posted on the city website and Facebook page and posted at city hall, as well as being noticed on the next water bills sent out to water users.

Several suggestions were raised, including the city using a cell-phone notification people could sign up for to notify them of situations liked the boil order.

People also complained about the apparent lack of communication between the city and county on the orders going out.

What to do with Cisterns

Several people said they are not hooked into the city water system - which also means they don't receive monthly water bills - but fill their cisterns for household water with water from the city bulk water station. They asked what they could do.

Mork said he would research that to find the best answers.

Possible other sources

Retired Hill County Sanitarian Clay Vincent said it is unlikely the city water supply is the source of the cases.

He said people can contract Giardiasis from a variety of sources.

"You can get Giardia from your dog licking in your face, you can get giardia from changing the dog's water that the dog's been licking in that has saliva in it and not cleaning your hands and eating a sandwich. ... You can get it by putting your beer cans pop cans, whatever in Beaver Creek Park in the water to cool it off and not cleaning the top of the can off and going ahead and drinking that; you can get it from Fresno Reservoir," he said.

He added that, in his experience, if Giardia were present in Havre"s water the city would have much more than three cases.

Several people said they have had Giardiasis or know people who have.

The city officials said many illnesses have symptoms similar to Giardiasis, and the only way to know for sure that is what someone has is to test them.

Hill County Health Department and Montana Department of Environmental Quality each said Tuesday that Havre has had three confirmed cases, with the symptoms starting to occur in February or early March for all of the cases.

Ongoing work

Mork said the city is in the middle of taking action to deal with the boil advisory, flushing the system and increasing treatment.

The city also is working with DEQ and EPA and other agencies to the review the plant and its procedures and create a comprehensive plan of actions to take.

He said the plant has a superintendent, who is primarily a supervisor at the plant and does things like handling the financial side and orders materials. That superintendent received certification in March.

Mork said the plant has three certified operators who actually work the plant treating the water and an assistant superintendent who is the lead operator in treating the water, That supervisor has five years experience as a certified operator.

Water Plant operator Brett Moen addressed the audience, saying he came to the meeting after he finished his shift at the plant.

He said the city has plans in place to fix the situation.

"This is not something that's going to devolve to something like Flint, Michigan," he said.

He said the plant has been running since 2003, and it has some issues, but the city is working to replace what needs to be replaced and fix what needs to be fixed.

He also said the plant has had a lack of leadership for a while, which now is restored. After the last superintendent retired, they had operators with training and some expertise, but no real head of the organization.

That was increased when Deputy Director of Public Works Jeff Jensen retired, followed by the retirement of Director of Public Works Dave Peterson, he said.

Now, with Mork overseeing the department and a new superintendent, they are trying to make some sense of things, Moen said.

He said the situation has been very difficult because of this year's weather. They have had to deal with four separate runoff events where weather goes from below zero to well-above freezing, leading to runoff over frozen ground with nothing to remove sediment and organics. They were dealing with that along with fixing problems that arose at the plant, at the same time that they were doing regular maintenance.

He said they are going around the city testing sites to see what the level of chlorine are, to show the level in all parts of the distribution system including the dead-end lines, to show it has one part per million for 15 straight days.

"Because that's how we're going to get out of this," Moen said.

He added that, We are trying to do our jobs every day to make sure things get done at that point.

"And, I'm sorry it's come to this, but we are ty9ing to work through to get you out if it," he added.