Important Information about Your Drinking Water
/Turbidity Treatment Requirements Not Met
Lummi Island Scenic Estates Community Club (LISECC) ID #43290 - Whatcom County
Our water system recently violated a drinking water standard. Although this situation does not require that you should take immediate action, as our customers, you have a right to know what happened, what you should do, and what we are doing to correct the situation.
We routinely monitor your water for turbidity (cloudiness). This tells us whether we are effectively filtering the water supply. Water samples from August 2019 to present (October 2019) showed that more than 5 percent of turbidity measurements were over 0.3 turbidity units – the standard is that no more than 5 percent of samples may exceed 0.3 turbidity units per month. The turbidity levels are relatively low. However, their persistence is a concern. Normal turbidity levels at our plant are 0.1 units.
What should I do?
You do not need to boil your water or take other corrective actions. However, if you have specific health concerns, consult your doctor.
People with severely compromised immune systems, infants, and some elderly may be at increased risk. These people should seek advice about drinking water from their health care providers. General guidelines on ways to lessen the risk of infection by microbes are available from the EPA Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 1 (800) 426-4791.
What does this mean?
Turbidity has no health effects. However, turbidity can interfere with disinfection and provide a medium for microbial growth. Turbidity may indicate the presence of disease causing organisms. These organisms include bacteria, virus, and parasites that can cause symptoms such as nausea, cramps, diarrhea, and associated headaches. The symptoms above are not caused only by organisms in drinking water. If you experience any of these symptoms and they persist, you may want to seek medical advice.
What happened?
Our treatment plant historically filters water at better than optimum performance goals: less than 0.1 turbidity units 95% of the time. LISECC received the Washington State Department of Health Gold Certificate of Achievement in June 2018 for reaching this goal for 10 years. However, beginning in August and continuing through October, our treatment process has become less effective, resulting in higher turbidity in the drinking water.
What is being done?
We contacted the Department of Health for consultation and arranged a site visit to review our treatment techniques. Since then we have been diligently working to identify what changed, and what we can do to reduce filtered water turbidity to optimum levels. We are actively pursuing the solution with oversight from the Department of Health.
Reducing the turbidity in our drinking water is our first priority.
We will notify LISECC customers as this problem is corrected.
Please share this information with other people who drink your water (for example, tenants and guests).
For more information, please contact Kevin Southworth, Operations Manager
phone: (360) 758-7055
email: kevin@lisecc.com
mailing address: 1211 Island Drive, Lummi Island, WA 98262
