Aqua Ohio held a presentation for the Marion County Commissioners on Wednesday to explain in more detail their plans to start using chloramines as a secondary disinfectant. Several community members against the change were in attendance and the water company pushed back against their assertions that the process is unsafe.
Aqua Ohio officials at the meeting included the Marion plant manager, Scott Ballenger, Tom Schwing, Aqua Ohio’s Safety and Compliance Officer, and Aqua’s president, Edmund Kolodziej. They reviewed the details of their plans, which entail added ammonia to the water just before it enters the distribution system. This addition would bond with chlorine to form chloramine which would act as a secondary disinfectant as the water travels to customers.
Rather than rehash the details of Aqua’s plan, which have not changed, you can learn more about the details by clicking here or clicking here to view previous stories.
Schwing told the Commissioners the EPA wants to reduce the production of disinfectant byproducts in the water system. Using chloramines, instead of the current practice of simply adding more chlorine, results in far fewer by products being created. He asserted that the use of chloramines is considered safe and acceptable by the Centers for Disease Control and the EPA. He said byproducts have been shown to cause cancer and other conditions.
The EPA offers two other acceptable alternatives that Aqua Ohio could implement, but company officials said those are vastly more expensive. To compare, Kolodziej said using chloramines required a $800,000 equipment investment and an ongoing cost increase of about $0.80 per month per customer. He said the other two options would require equipment investment of over $10 million and ongoing costs of about $13 per month per customer.
In addition to the costs, which would have to be passed onto customers, Kolodziej said those alternatives come with other downsides, including the disposal of possibly harmful waste products.
When the suggestion of an alternative provided by a company called Blue Earth Labs, Schwing said he is aware of the product, but has not evaluated it because it is not a choice allowed by the EPA.
During the meeting, Aqua Ohio officials pushed back against assertions that chloramines are not safe. They said they found no states where chloramines are banned, as was stated by opponents, and there have been no studies that show chloramines present a danger to health.
When Marion resident Ed Christian brought up a lawsuit in Washington DC where he said children were harmed by chloramine, Schwing said that was not true. He stated that if you read the lawsuit brief, it says that it was over damage to pipes caused because the water chemistry was not stabilized and that chloramines were not a contributing factor. Schwing said, even following the lawsuit, Washington DC continues to use chloramine, a testament to its safety.
Disputing other claims by opponents, Schwing said that chloramine will not build up in a person’s body and will not additionally impact the City and County waste water treatment plants. He said that many of people’s concerns are coming from reading inaccurate reports on the internet and cases where chloramine was used improperly or as a primary disinfectant.
The Marion County Commissioner took no action during the informational meeting on Wednesday. The issue will be debated again during the next Marion City Council meeting on Monday, June 10, 2013. The meeting starts at 7:30pm on the second floor of City Hall. Aqua Ohio officials will once again be in attendance and the Ohio EPA is expected to send a representative. Opponents have promised to bring experts to speak out against chloramines.
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