EPA meets with Aqua Ohio over Marion water issues; company answers community questions

MARION, Ohio (WSYX) — After months of complaints from residents of Marion over the taste and smell of their water, the Ohio EPA met with representatives from Aqua Ohio at their Marion facility on Tuesday. This meeting included reviews of facilities and discussions for the future handling of instances of geosmin in the water system.

Six hours into this meeting, I spoke with a representative from Aqua Ohio, Jeff La Rue, to answer many of the questions that persist within the community. That interview continues as follows:

What took place today?

“…Ohio EPA came out to Marion today because they offer a very unique perspective on a situation that affects not just Marion, but several other systems around the state of Ohio. And that is geosmin that appears in our raw water or our source water before it enters the water treatment plan.”

The Ohio EPA told me they were reviewing the facilities and having those discussions of next steps. What have those discussions looked like?

So the Ohio EPA’s visit today was to look at Auqua’s water treatment and source water protection, our source water management practices, because they offer a really good perspective statewide at what are the best practices for geosmin removal and potentially geosmin prevention in raw water or source water.

I think that the root of what they’re here for is to explore and make recommendations for best practices for geosmin management and removal. Right now in Marion, we really have three tools in our toolbox for dealing with geosman. First is detect it in our raw water before it reaches our plant. Second, we can add carbon once it reaches our, or once it makes it into the plant to help remove it. And then finally, if it gets out of our plant, we’re left with opening fire hydrants to try to flush it out of our system. We don’t really have a silver bullet for geosmin removal.

What mitigation steps have been taken since noticing the Geosmin in December?

..What we did was once we detected it the first time, we increased the frequency of our tests to detect it. We increased the amount of carbon, which, for lack of a better way to describe it, helped absorb the geosmin, and then we increased flushing in our system. So, really did three things to help manage the appearance of geosmin and the musty taste and odor issues.

The smell of the water reported has shifted, originally hearing it smelled like sulfur, and now that it smells like chemicals, like a pool with chlorine or bleach. Are there any chemicals that have been going into the water to counteract this geosmin?

First of all, let me say we have not changed the level of pre-chlorine in our water. Geosmin is a funny thing. Some people think it smells musty, I personally think it’s musty, almost like the smell of mulch. Some people describe it as a more chemical taste, other people never detect it at all. Rocky, one of the important things to explain here is this water, the geosmin water was distributed throughout the whole Marion water treatment system, and some folks detected it, many other people never did. Some that did detect it thought it tasted more like chemicals, others thought it was more earthy or musty.

Multiple people have said that the water isn’t just smelling and tasting bad, but is cloudy and even milky. One woman said there seemed to be sediment in her water. If geosmin only affects flavor and taste, why would these people be having visual signs of their water being different?

I have heard of some people describing cloudy water. That probably is air bubbles in their water line, which maybe could be related to us flushing nearby and changing water pressure, or water velocity could stir up the water if we’re talking about cloudiness, especially cloudiness that dissipates to the top of the glass relatively quickly. If there are other color issues, we probably need to explore what’s going on at that house.

Why is it that the problems with the water have seemed to fluctuate in severity these past few months?

We believe the reason the level of geosmin has kind of come and gone is that it’s working its way down the Scioto River, which is one of our main sources for water in Marion. As the water froze, I expect some of that geosmin got locked up in the ice, if you will. Then, as it got warmer, that melted again and was reintroduced into our plant. We are speculating at this point, and that’s one of the things we’re exploring with the Ohio EPA right now.

What was the initial cause of the geosmin?

We think it was from algae growth in the Scioto River during the long, dry summer and fall that we had. Then, as it made its way down the river, we had cold spells, we had warm spells, cold spells. My best guess right now is sometimes it got frozen and locked up in the ice and then was later released. Rocky, I should really stress, I’m speculating on that. We may never know with full confidence what caused that, but that’s our best guess right now.

When I see instances of Geosmin in water, it’s not a problem that I have typically seen persist for months. Is there a reason why it’s been three months of on-and-off problems?

We’ve actually detected Geosmin three times in Marion. The first was mid-December, December 15th. The second was the first week of February, and the third was about two weeks later. We think that was related to the geosmin getting caught up in ice in the Scioto River and being released periodically. One of the challenges we faced, especially that first time in the middle of December, was we were looking at sub-zero temperatures or single-digit temperatures. We couldn’t implement one of our three tools to eliminate geosmin, and that’s opening fire hydrants to eject it from our water system. If we had done that, we would have had huge ice patches all over the Marion City streets, so especially in December, the geosmin was able to stick around in our system and migrate through our system more than it normally could because we simply couldn’t open fire hydrants.

Is it safe to say the sub-zero temperatures prolonged the issue of the quality of the water?

I think it’s definitely safe to say that the cold winter we’ve had has prolonged the occurrence and probably influenced the geosmin coming and going as the freeze and thaw cycles go through in the Scioto River. One of the things we’re really hopeful for is now that it started to warm out, now that we’ve gotten some more rain, if we really get a good heavy, rain we’re confident that’ll help flush a lot of that down the Scioto River.

Today, with the EPA, are you able to give specifics of what they’re looking at?

“We’re glad the Ohio EPA is in Marion today, and we’re going to take as much time as it needs, as we need to take with them. In the last update, I got the EPA representatives and Aqua staff; they were out in the field. I believe they were looking at the source water. They’re going to be going through the plants. They’re going to look at policies and procedures. I want to be very clear, the Ohio EPA, they certify the tests that we run on the water, and they certify our water plan operators. So it’s very important that we work hand in hand with the Ohio EPA on all levels of water source protection, that protection of the management of that source all the way through the treatment and distribution.

What are the next steps to clear up the water in Marion?

Well, we believe the water in Marion is cleared up. We haven’t detected geosmin for weeks at the point leaving the water treatment plants and entering the distribution plant. So first of all, I want to say that I believe the next steps are that the EPA is going to collect all the data and make recommendations for possible improvements to our processes for detection and treatments. And we very well could walk away with suggestions for the other water treatment systems around Ohio that are dealing with geosmin.

You say the geosmin hasn’t been detected in weeks, but I know just the other day we went to a man’s home and we noticed the water wasn’t to normal quality we see in Marion. If it hasn’t been detected in weeks, why would water in individuals’ homes still have an unpleasant taste and smell?

Without knowing that individual’s home, I can only speculate. But I can tell you, where we are testing is the point where water leaves our water treatment plant and enters the distribution system. Which is a spider web of pipes that goes throughout the community. When people call us and say they’ve detected it in their line, we’re able to dispatch crews to flush the fire hydrants nearest to their home and hopefully flush out any geosmin that could be remaining out in the distribution system.

Is there anything physical or concrete coming out of this meeting with the EPA? Such as an action plan or report? Anything specific?

I don’t want to commit them to doing a report if that’s not their intention. At the very least, what I hope is that we’re all able to walk away from the meeting and the survey visit today with ideas to better manage geosmin, whether it’s in our source raw water or in the treatment plants.

We have some questions from our viewers that we want to get answered. One of them being why is Aqua Ohio using a water source that has geosmin in it? Is there any alternative water source that can be used for Marion?

We actually have three water sources in Marion, and we’re blessed with that. Most water systems only have one. We have a set of wells, we have the big Scioto and we have the little Scioto River, the little Scioto and the big Scioto both had geosmin in them. We don’t have enough capacity at the wells to meet demand for the whole community. So normally we take about 70% of our water from the two rivers and about 30% from the wells. Once we detected the geosmin, we switched that and leaned more heavily on the wells, but we can’t do that forever. The wells will start to run dry.

Another viewer question is about transparency, you told me tests have been done, is there a way for us to get the results of those tests?

Our water test results are all submitted to the Ohio EPA, and as a matter of record, they become a public record. So anybody that wants to see those results can get those from the EPA, and we annually distribute a consumer confidence report that summarizes those results. And we send that, we put that on our website, and make that available to all customers.

Lastly, from viewers, locals have been using water bottles and having to buy filtration systems for months, and it can get really costly. Is there any kind of compensation they’d be able to get for their personal money going to buying other forms of water for drinking or cooking?

We don’t really have a mechanism to reimburse customers for this sort of aesthetic issue.

I want to hone in on the word aesthetic issue, because I know you have reiterated throughout the whole time that the water is safe. Are you saying the water may be unpleasant, but it is safe, and since it is safe, you’re getting the water you paid for? Does making reimbursement not make sense? Is that what you’re saying?

Yes.

Is there anything you’d say to the community that, for the last three months, has used bottled water, people haven’t wanted to shower in their tap water? Anything you’d want to say to the community, or updates?

What I would like to say to the community is we want to thank them for their patience. This is one of those things that, in Marion, we haven’t had a geosmin incident for nearly 20 years. And we want to express that we appreciate their patience and help, and we want them to realize that we’re embarrassed by the situation, and we were part of this community. Our employees live and work right here alongside them. We know the patience that it takes to deal with this, and we hope that at the end of the day, it will be at least another 20 years before we detect geosmin at the Marion plant.