Council hears from PeopleService rep

PHIL COBB/THE FORUM
Steve Guthrie, Missouri region manager for PeopleService Inc., Maryville’s water services provider, gave a presentation to the City Council Monday regarding ongoing concerns with the taste and odor of city water.

MARYVILLE, Mo. — It might not be the news municipal water customers want to hear, but the City of Maryville wants them to know it is doing everything it can to remedy recent issues with foul taste and odor.

To that end, Monday’s City Council meeting included a presentation by Steve Guthrie, Missouri region manager for PeopleServices Inc., the city’s water services provider.

Guthrie assured the council and a small group of citizens that, “improvements will occur with time.” However, the length of time still appears to remain in the hands of Mother Nature.

Guthrie indicated that without another prolonged cold spell like what the region recently experienced, the problems with the water still could extend for months.

“We’ve dealt with taste and odor issues before,” Guthrie said. “But nothing this significant.”

He went on to describe what amounts to a delicate balancing act required in treating the water through chemical means.

“Chemical treatment has eliminated some of the problem, but not nearly enough,” Guthrie said.

He went on to describe how unusual weather conditions, plus lake turnover resulted in a larger than normal algae bloom near the lake intakes.

Recent sub-zero temperatures were enough to kill the blooms, but apparently, although the blooms died, the oils they secrete are still present in the lake.

“It’s been an interesting year as far as weather is concerned and we’re running into things we’re not used to seeing,” Guthrie said.

He went on to say that carbon application has been increased to the maximum amounts possible without damaging vital and expensive membranes in the system.

“You have to be careful with the carbon.” Guthrie said. “If you overfeed it and it gets in the membranes and it fouls them … it requires more vacuum to pull the water through.

“The more vacuum you put on those membranes, the more chances of damaging the membranes.”

Guthrie explained that the Maryville water plant is unlike others PeopleService operates in the area.

“We operate a plant 30 miles north, 50 miles east, 35 miles east, and one about an hour and a half northeast of here, all surface-water plants, all use chlorine dioxide and all have algae problems.” Guthrie explained. “But they have things in place where we can really increase the chlorine dioxide, increase our carbon feed and really knock it for a loop. So, we have to think outside the box.

“It is an engineering design flaw in the plant in how and where certain things are fed and what we can do with our carbon.”

Carbon is not the only chemical being used to treat the drinking water. Guthrie explained that chlorine dioxide also has been increased to its maximum acceptable level.

“Chlorine dioxide in small doses is very, very beneficial,” Guthrie said. “You get to a certain point (though), it’s a regulated contaminate by the EPA and DNR.”

PeopleService also has been using sodium percobanate which, according to Guthrie, was increased until staff started seeing turbidity in the membranes, indicating it and the chlorine dioxide were fighting against each other.

Another method used to combat the issue was to switch intakes to try to get below the algae bloom.

“It has not been effective,” Guthrie said. “The water seems to be homogenous from top to bottom on both intakes.

“We’ve also converted pre-chlorines to chloromines at the recommendation of the DNR. So far it has not proved as effective. It has helped some, but not like what we want.

“We’ve tried every different varying combination we can think of to try and get the right concoction, but each adjustment takes four to five days before we know the effects.”

Guthrie said that PeopleService has been monitoring the drinking water for the City of Maryville for 11 and a half years and this is not the first time they’ve dealt with taste and odor issues.

He said that in the past when the amount of water intake is reduced and the “oxidizers” are increased, the problem goes away.

“That has not been the case this year,” Guthrie acknowledged.

PeopleService has been working with the Department of Natural Resources, who was on site Tuesday, to help narrow down possible short-term solutions.

Guthrie did emphasize that first and foremost is making sure the water is safe to drink.

“We have to meet drinking water standards first and then taste and odors, no matter how unpleasant it tastes or smells, we have to be sure we meet the drinking water standards. And we are meeting all drinking water standards by the state of Missouri,” Guthrie said.

He said that the state controls all the water sampling and testing.

PeopleService collects the samples and sends them in, but the state approves the sample sites, and runs the lab.

“They run everything, we have nothing to do with the lab techniques,” Guthrie said, referring to what he called “some misinformation out there.”

After talking about what has been done and what is being done to battle the issue in the short term, Guthrie recommended the city research mechanical mixing technology known as “solar bees” to limit algae blooms around the lake pump house in the future.

Frustrations among city officials and staff seem to have prompted the city to do just that.

City Manager Greg McDanel told the council that city staff would research long-term solutions and come back with something for them to look at in a future meeting.

Longer term solutions presented by Guthrie Monday night included:

• Forming a lake-management plan, which would allow staff to be proactive in the future rather that the reactive position they currently find themselves in. He said the City of Springfield has a template by which they could go by.
• Exploring a mechanical mixing technology such as “solar bees” which would agitate the water near the intakes and help prevent conditions in which the algae can bloom. Guthrie said this could be a “six-figure project.”
• Looking into GAC filters, which he says are used at other area plants and would allow for more aggressive carbon treatment of the water before it reaches the membranes, but he said that could be a “multimillion-dollar project” and would be “three years down the road.”