September 2, 2011
Sac City, Iowa - In 2009, residents from the Oak Street and Oak Hill area of Sac City, Iowa appeared before the council to lodge a complaint about drinking water with a dark orange coloration, referred to as “red” water. At the time, they demanded that the city dig up and replace the mains in that area to get rid of the problem. It came to light at the same time that there were other areas of town that were having problems with tinted water as well.
Prior to 2008 under the guidance of then City Administrator Jeff Fiegenschuh and Maintenance Department Head Bob Scheffler, the city was merely opening up the fire hydrants and draining the red water out of the system, which would temporarily fix the tint problem, but was not addressing the overall problem of the cause of the red water. It should be noted that in addition to the tint, the water is also very hard.
So, back to 2009. Based on the widespread nature of the problem, City Administrator Adam Ledford consulted with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to get a recommendation about what should be done. The DNR recommended changing the balance of the chlorination in the water system.
There have been no reports from any of the problem areas about the return of red water except in the case of the area by Oak Street.
At this point the city council authorized a procedure known as super chlorination. This involved isolating the problem water lines from the rest of the system and flooding them with chlorine. This is typically done in response to the presence of a type of bacteria.
Super chlorination, characterized as the “Nuclear Option” of fighting red water problems, and typically the last step before actually digging up lines and replacing them, did not solve the problem.
Enter Shirley Phillips and the Sac Economic and Tourism Development (SETD). Shirley Phillips, at around this time, announced the impending arrival of a water filter making plant in Sac City that would bring 100 jobs to the county. Because they work in secret, it is not known how the SETD lost that deal, but what DID come out of it was the knowledge that this company might be able to produce a filter of a high enough quality to take care of the particles causing the red water issue in Sac City.
Ledford initiated a pilot program in one of the homes on Oak Street to see if this new filter would work.
That was about one year ago.
On August 30, 2011 the Sac City Water Committee met and learned the filter did indeed remove the coloration from the water, but that it did not address the hardness of the water.
Besides digging up the lines, other possible solutions to this problem include:
1. Continuing to periodically spot super chlorinate the neighborhood.
2. Emptying the lines and running the equivalent of a long Q-tip through the line to physically clean them.
3. Emptying the lines and using high pressure water to clean them.
4. Paying for regular filter systems and changing them out frequently.
5. Buying one the high end filter systems discussed above.
As of September 2, 2011 a cost comparison for these various solutions was not available, which is one of the main reasons that the Sac City Water Committee did not make a recommendation to the council about how to move forward to address the problem.
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