IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR DRINKING WATER

Test showed Coliform Bacteria in the Dudley Water

Our water system recently violated a drinking water standard. Although this incident was not an emergency, as our customers, you have a right to know what happened and what we did to correct this situation.

We routinely monitor for drinking water contaminants. We took 17 samples to test for the presence of Coliform bacteria during the month of February, 3 of our samples showed the presence of total Coliform bacteria. The standard is that no more than one sample per month may be positive.

What should I do?

Nothing, you do not need to boil your water or to take other corrective actions.

What does this mean?

This is not an emergency or anything you need to be concerned with. If it had been, you would have been notified immediately. Coliform bacteria are generally not harmful themselves. Coliforms are bacteria which are naturally present in the environment and are used as an indicator that other, potentially-harmful, bacteria may be present. Coliforms were found in more samples than allowed and this was a warning of potential problems.

What did we do?

Whenever we detect Coliform bacteria in any sample, we do follow up testing to see if other bacteria of greater concern, such as fecal coliform or E. coli, and present. We did not find any of these bacteria in our subsequent testing, and further testing showed that this problem has been resolved.

When Dudley water was notified by our lab of the test looking as if it was going to be positive for Coliform Bacteria, Immediately 9 more samples were taken in those locations, all which came back completely negative of any Coliform,

This was only a Tier 2 violation, we were unaware that it needed to be posted in the paper, until just recently when DEP contacted us with their new regulations for the Tier 2 violation..

For more information please contact the Dudley Water Dept at 508-949-8007.

Please share this information with all the other people who drink this water, especially those who may not have received this notice directly.

This notices is from the Dudley Water Dept PWS# 2080000 3/30/10