Oxford Township residents returned to drinking their tap water without boiling it first late Thursday afternoon, five days after the presence of total coliform bacteria was first detected in the municipal water system.
A Feb. 13 notice from the Oakland County Drain Commission informed water customers that the “boil water notice” issued on Feb. 10 was “terminated as of 4 p.m.”
“Bacteria were not detected in any of the distribution samples collected on Tuesday, Feb. 11 and Wednesday, Feb. 12,” the notice stated. “A letter regarding this situation will be mailed to customers within 30 days.”
Samples obtained from the township’s water tower in the Red Barn subdivision (on Feb. 5) and neighboring houses on either side of the tower (on Feb. 9) all tested positive for the presence of total coliform bacteria.
At the Feb. 12 township board meeting, Trustee Shirley Clancy said she wanted to make it clear to residents that coliform bacteria was NOT detected in the groundwater test samples taken from the township’s well sites. “(The bacteria) was not in the groundwater,” she said.
Coliform can be an indicator of the presence of more harmful bacteria such as fecal coliform or E. coli, however, follow-up tests did not identify any other bacteria in the water, according to Tim Prince, chief engineer for the Oakland County Drain Commission.
The drain commission was unable to determine the origin of the coliform bacteria, which is believed to have been somewhere in the township’s water distribution system (pipes), Prince said.
Prince said the drain commission checked all the commercial establishments (such as restaurants, hair salons, dentists, etc.) in the area where the “bad samples” were obtained, but the results were fruitless.
The drain commission will be meeting with the township to discuss the possibility of “accelerating” the county’s “Residential Cross-Connection Control Program” in Oxford, Prince said.
Under the program, drain commission representatives would go door-to-door in the township checking for unprotected residential cross-connections between drinking and non-potable (not drinkable) water supplies. Sprinkler systems and swimming pools are examples of non-potable water supplies.
An unprotected cross-connection (one without adequate back-flow prevention) between a non-potable source and the township system could have caused the coliform bacteria to appear, he said.
Drain commission officials will also be checking for cross-connections between private wells and the township water system, Prince said.
Prince said private wells must be “physically separated” from the township system.
“If someone tied the two together that would be illegal,” he said.
Supervisor Bill Dunn said some residents have complained about the speed and/or the method by which they were notified of the water problem.
“They can blame me for that,” he said. “This was my first time.”
Dunn said he notified the newspapers, television stations and Oxford Community Cable Access Channel 19 of the water problem on Feb. 10, the same day he learned of it.
“I guess it wasn’t totally effective,” he said. “In the future, I think we’re also going to use mass mailings and billboards, like the Message Center on M-24. Not everyone reads the papers or watches TV.”
When the boil water notice was lifted Thursday, a public notice announcing it was immediately posted on the Message Center billboard.
“If this sort of thing ever happens again, the township will be better prepared and the residents will be notified quicker and more effectively. I promise,” Dunn added.
Although he was mostly complimentary of the way the drain commission handled the whole situation, Dunn said he was “disappointed” in the county because he didn’t hear there was a problem until a citizen contacted him on Feb. 9.
“I told (the drain commission) that if they ever hit coliform again or anything else that shouldn’t be there, I’m to be immediate notified,” he said.
However, he wanted to note that otherwise the drain commission “went out of their way” for the township. “There were great,” he said.
The water problem affected local businesses in different ways.
David Iselli, co-owner of Fatt Daddy’s Restaurant, said the situation “increased my out-of-pocket expenses by an extra couple hundred dollars.”
Iselli said he had to buy bottled water, ice and two-liter bottles of soda pop to serve his customers.
Oxford Meijer Manager Dave Devries said when his store learned about the township’s water problem on the night of Feb. 10, three semi-trucks loads of Absopure drinking water were immediately ordered and delivered the next morning to meet customer demand. “We sold a good amount of it,” he said.
Meijer also donated 1,824 bottles of spring water to Oxford Middle School last week because the school’s drinking fountains are supplied with township water, Devries said.