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Tap water dirtier than ever, Bald Knob residents report: While hook-up to Searcy delayed, citizens live in filth
By Tim Bousquet
The Daily Citizen
Tuesday, November 9, 2004 12:43 AM CST
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Ray Woodward displays two clothes soiled from residue left in his family's bath tub and washing machine following their using city water in north Bald Knob. (Philip Holsinger/The Daily Citizen)
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Brown, icky water is coming out of their taps, say Keri Johnson and Amanda Knuckles.
Clothes come out of the wash browner than when they went in, chunks of black gook sit on the bottom of a glass filled from the faucet, and a gritty film remains on the sides of bathtubs.
Johnson and Knuckles are neighbors on Phillips Lane, just north of Bald Knob, and are also employees of The Daily Citizen. But several other Bald Knob area residents have also called the paper to complain about the quality of their water in recent days.
All say that the rates in the Bald Knob North Water District went up several months ago in anticipation of the arrival of water from the Searcy Water District, which officials said would end the water quality problems. But the new water hook-up date keeps getting moved back, and the water has become particularly bad over the past week.
Worse, said Johnson and Knuckles, the Bald Knob Water District is completely unresponsive to their complaints.
"I call them and they say there's nothing they can do, just come to the meeting at the third Tuesday of the month," said Knuckles.
It isn't just the quality of the water that bothers Knuckles - she also complains that she's being improperly billed.
"Every month my bill says that I'm using exactly 8,000 gallons of water," she said. "Now how is that possible? And I have less animals than I used to have, so I should be using less water.
"They told me that the meter reader comes on the 16th of every month, so I had my husband go out on the 16th and check the meter readings. None of them were anywhere near what it said on the bill."
A woman who answered the phone at the Bald Knob North Water Department office and who identified herself as "Gail" to a reporter wouldn't directly answer questions. She first said questions should be directed to District President R.J. Peacock - "you can call him at home at night" - then suggested the department engineer - "but he's only here at exactly 8:30 in the morning."
Pressed for more information, the woman hung up on a reporter.
Earnie Storey, superintendent of the Bald Knob Water Department, which is a separate entity that services residents within the city of Bald Knob, was more cooperative, taking a break from clearing a sewer line on Cleveland Street to talk to a reporter.
Storey said the water in the city system is running about as clean as it can right now, but that the Bald Knob North system was having problems. He noted the southern portions of Bald Knob North, which are fed directly by a Bald Knob City water tank, aren't having any problems. The northern portion of Bald Knob North, however, are fed by a separate tank owned by Bald Knob North, and that water is problematic.
"There's a lot of different ways to get bad water," said Storey, equivocating before launching into what he believed the problem is.
In short, the Bald Knob city tank is filled directly from the water plant, which takes water out of Bald Knob Lake. With all the rain recently, the lake is flowing cleanly, and so long as a constant pressure is maintained, the water coming out of taps in the city should be clean.
But the water used to fill the Bald Knob North tank flows only intermittently, said Storey. Any number of things can happen as water is transferred between the two systems - there can be a break in the line, for example, or simply a pause between pumpings.
The result, he suspects, is that as the pressure changes it breaks off calcified magnesium deposits along the pipes, and the brown gunk gets dropped in the Bald Knob North tank, and then into residents homes.
The magnesium got on the pipes in the first place because the lake water is high in the mineral. When the water is chlorinated it combines chemically with the magnesium, resulting in a solid that drops out of the water and lines the pipes.
Everyone with any official capacity strongly maintains that there's nothing dangerous about the water. The brown and black magnesium chunks may be unsightly but don't threaten human health.
The state Health Department periodically monitors the water, including on Monday, due to the large volume of complaints, and has found bacterial levels to be in the acceptable range.
Storey reiterated that using chlorine bleach in the wash only makes the problem worse, because the bleach accelerates the solidification process.
Johnson and Knuckles said they have been warned repeatedly about not using bleach, but the problem persists.
"They should look on the side of the box of laundry detergent," said Storey. "Just because it isn't bleach doesn't mean that the detergent doesn't contain bleach."
The magnesium problem will ultimately be solved when both the Bald Knob and the Balk Knob North systems shift to using water from the Searcy Water District, said Storey. A pipeline has been constructed along Hwy 67, but the hook-up has been delayed due to minor construction problems, which Storey hoped would be overcome in about a week.
Meanwhile, the water customers stew.
"Look at my clothes," said Johnson. "They came out of the washer browner than they went it. I don't want to wear this, but I don't have the money to buy new clothes."
"I won't even give the tap water to my house dogs," said Knuckles, speaking of a boxer and lab puppy. "I give them bottled water.
"Their water bowl had brown chunks on the bottom of it - the water's too dirty even for a dog."
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