Town flushing out bacterial intruder

Alamosa begins cleansing water of salmonella

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Originally published 01:27 p.m., March 25, 2008
Updated 12:23 a.m., March 26, 2008

Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky

A chlorinated water sample drips from a drainpipe at one of Alamosa's two water towers. The heavily treated water began flowing through city pipes Tuesday to kill salmonella, which has sickened more than 200 people in the southern Colorado town.

Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky

Larry Jack warns his children Bailey, middle, and Hunter not to use any water.

This small southern Colorado city managed to fill half its 500,000-gallon water tower with heavily chlorinated water by 5 p.m. Tuesday.

It was the first step in killing a debilitating salmonella infection and lifting severe water restrictions on Alamosa's 10,000 residents.

With 237 people sick with salmonella bacteria traced to the water supply, the city Tuesday began a massive flushing of the water system with concentrated chlorine.

The chlorinated water will be circulated to homes, neighborhood by neighborhood. Several hundred families began receiving it by late afternoon Tuesday.

The disinfectant is so strong that the water can be used only for flushing toilets for what may be several days. Drinking, bathing, brushing teeth, doing laundry and using the dishwasher all are banned. Even washing hands could cause skin irritation, residents were warned.

'Getting out of Dodge'

That limitation was too much for Kathleen Tetwiler and her family, who live in the first neighborhood to receive the chlorine.

"We're getting out of Dodge. We're going to Denver," she said.

"We're teachers. They canceled school for the rest of the week," she said. "With three little kids, it bothers me to say you can't wash your hands."

She plans to make the best of it with her husband and three girls: 7-year-old twins and their 11- year-old sister. "We plan to say in an hotel, go to the zoo and have a good time," Tetwiler said.

Her neighbor, Edna Ortega, washed down all her faucets, sinks, tubs and toilets with Clorox wipes and gloves. "You don't realize you need water till you don't have it," she said. She was also surprised by "how automatic it is to just turn on the faucet."

Officials hoped to have the entire tower filled with the chlorinated water sometime after midnight, said Bradley Simons, engineering manager for the water quality division of the state health department. Then the disinfectant will sit for 24 hours.

Alamosa public works director Don Koskelin said the 25 parts per million solution is strong enough to kill salmonella bacteria in only 31/2 minutes. "So we're being really conservative," he said.

With the tower providing pressure, officials will then open up a 300,000-gallon ground-level reservoir that has already been chlorinated, and use that water to flush out some 50 miles of pipes.

After the cleansing process is done, the water will be de-chlorinated with a chemical, and then dumped into the storm sewers, which empty into the Rio Grande.

Koskelin said only 300 to 400 houses were likely to get the concentrated chlorine Tuesday, but there was a possibility of the chlorine seeping into other parts of the water system. So everyone has been warned.

Careful watch over pipes

Today, Denver Water technicians will be monitoring the cast iron pipes in the older section of town, because the high velocity of water could cause cracking, Si mons said. "We want to be very cautious about that."

After the decontamination is done, officials said they will bring well water back into the system, gradually diluting the chlorine until people can begin to take showers, and eventually drink it.

In the end, which could be days or weeks away, Alamosa's water will maintain a 1 ppm chlorine level, normal for municipal water systems and enough to keep the water safe from recontamination with salmonella, Koskelin said.

Officials don't know how or where salmonella entered the water system, which is an unusual deep-well system. It has not required disinfection until now.

Most local restaurants are trying to stay open, to earn some money and to rebuild public confidence, said Donna Wehe, director of the San Luis Small Business Development Center.

"It's difficult, but they're bringing in ice from the outside, using paper products, using big gallon water containers to prepare food and clean dishes," she said. "They're using more frozen vegetables."

But some were using their imaginations. Scott Graber, of the San Luis Valley Brewing Co. restaurant, used his brewing kettles to boil water for the restaurant before the chlorination began. He even gave a few kegs of boiled water to friends for showers.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: LARRY AND HUNTER JACK

Larry Jack, a Colorado Department of Transportation employee, was going door-to-door notifying residents not to use the water Tuesday morning. Here's how he got involved with the salmonella contamination in Alamosa:

My son is one of the kids who got sick. He's 12, his name is Hunter. He was extremely sick. We took him to the doctor, they ran the test. They gave him medication for the pain. It was scary. It was extremely scary.

The doctor told Jeni, my ex-wife, that it was salmonella.

The county nurse called Jeni and asked a few questions about where he'd been, what did he eat.

We explained to him (Hunter) what it was, and it wouldn't take forever. He was fine with it.

(When he learned it was contaminated water) he was concerned about what to drink, what not to drink.

We wanted to get the children wherever it was safe. We needed to find out where it was contaminated. We involved the kids, and said, if it's your mom's house, we'll bring you out here (to my house, on well water). He handled it well. I'm shocked, his sister never got sick.

Hunter:

I'm OK. It was horrible, though, the first few days. Man, I couldn't even hardly walk. I couldn't eat.