There are now new concerns about the drinking water in the Lake Osborne Estates.
The entire neighborhood is under a precautionary boil water notice due to a water main break Tuesday. This comes just two months after the same community had been drinking E Coli contaminated water for almost a week before learning of the danger.
Jason Conrad is taking no chances with his drinking water, specially after seeing the water main break in his neighborhood Tuesday.
“I became very concerned,” said Conrad. It brings back bad memories. “I got sick. My neighbors got very sick.”
That’s when his entire neighborhood discovered it had been drinking E Coli contaminated water for nearly a week before any boil water notifications when out.
This was also related to a water main break.
His neighbor, Pam Wallace, isn’t taking chances either. Her husband is in stage for renal failure, and he got sick last time, too.
“If he drinks contaminated water, then I might lose him,” said Wallace.
While it took about 24 hours, precautionary boil water notifications did go out some time Wednesday morning,
It seems the water company and the Health Department aren’t taking any chances either, sending out these precautionary notices to all the customers.
Even though, as we learned last time, it’s not normally required if the break is repaired under pressure, U.S Water Services says the break Tuesday was repaired under pressure, as was the one from two months ago, but precautionary notices did not go to all the customers then.
“It’s not a change in protocol. We’re just looking a little closer this time and advising them to look a little closer,” explained Tim O’Connor from the Department of Health.
However, the neighbors say those warnings should be required. They says they don’t want to wait for the water for test to come back to find out whether they need to boil their water.
“I feel if there’s a need to test the water, I feel there should be a need for the notifications to go out at that time,” said Conrad.
The health department says it is now looking into the timeline of when the water company notified the health department. O’Connor says the health department is required to be notified within 2 hours of the discovery of the break.
Representatives from U.S. Water Services tell NewsChannel 5 they notified the health department as soon as the repairs were made.
The first water test results should come back Thursday.