EPA laments small-town ‘drinking’ problem
uy UINA MILES
Of the Emerald
The Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) has discovered Oregon may have a
drinking problem — but it has nothing to do
with alcohol.
The problem, cited in a recent article in a
news report published by the state en
vironmental council, stems from several
community water systems that fail to check
for bacteria in the water they serve to cus
tomers in the area.
The article explains that about half of the
state community drinking water systems
are unchecked and that most of those sys
tems serve fewer than 1,000 people. Surpris
ingly, the EPA cited only one system in
Lane County that it claims serves un
checked water, but whether the system is
actually guilty of such a practice is a debat
able issue.
EPA Spokesperson Bill Titus of Portland
says the computer printout points to the
Woahink Lake Mobile Home Resort in Flor
ence as one system that has not submitted
water samples to be checked. He says the
EPA has sent out letters to all water sys
f
terns in question since last October, and the
EPA tried to reach by telephone those sys
tems which didn’t answer the letters.
But a spokesperson at Woahink says the
resort has sent a water sample every time it
was requested, and the EPA has nabbed
the wrong culprits.
“This water has been good for a hundred
years,” he says. He adds that the EPA “has
no reason” to suspect Woahink’s water
supply, because he has receipts from the
EPA to prove the water has been checked
and found safe.
He adds that if the water was ever faulty,
“ someone would have found out im
ediately." He says he checks the turbidity of
the water daily.
So why does the EPA computer still have
Woahink on its blacklist?
The spokesperson suspects the
bureaucracy of the EPA may be an expla
nation.
“There’s so many hands involved,’’ he
says. The Woahink water has been
checked time and again, but, he points out,
"there’s always someone (at the EPA) with
a bright idea.” Woahink and the EPA have
“gone around and around,” he says, trying
to set the situation straight, but the EPA
consistently has “someone down my red
neck.”
He says Woahink has never resisted an
EPA order to have the water checked.
“There’s nothing to keep them from testing
it,” he says, adding he hasn’t heard from the
EPA for about three months.
Titus acknowledges that some errors
may exist in the printout, and his office con
tinues to weed out any wrongly accused
systems.
He also laments problems the four
person EPA staff must tackle while trying to
identify those systems, because it’s time
consuming and costly for such a small staff
to travel across the state.
“It’s tough to track them down,” he says,
“without going out of the office.” Titus says
the EPA discovered some phone numbers
were no longer listed for some community
systems, while others were disconnected.
”1 have a hunch that (the problem) could
be inventory errors,” he remarks. He notes
that because many suspected systems are
subdivisions of other major systems, often
the recipient of the EPA letter doesn't know
who should handle the matter. Conse
quently, he believes, it is left alone.
In the past, he says, most of the systems
which haven’t had the water analyzed, ea
gerly comply with the request, and while
court action stands as a final alternative to
handle some cases, it is not often used.
"We just ask for compliance” Titus says.
“We’d rather get the job done.”
Al Symthe of the state health division in
Portland, echoes Titus' belief that some
times the water system officials are unin
formed or unaware of the law. He also says
few people are actually trying to avoid the
law, but rather, “the guy is just not aware of
it.”
Federal law requires that operators of
public drinking water systems collect and
analyze samples of the water and send the
results to EPA or some state health agency.
The EPA states the bacteriological
sampling, analysis and reporting process
costs about $10 a month.
Titus said the maximum penalty for not
complying with the law is up to $5,000 for
each day the water system went un
checked.
Other small communities the EPA has
cited for investigation include several water
districts in Coos Bay, Coquille, Lincoln City,
Newport and Gold Beach.
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