Why nine Iowa counties have gone days without clean drinking water

Kevin Hardy | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Six days later, nine Iowa counties continue to cope with tainted water A water boil warning was issued last Friday for Creston and nine surrounding counties until further notice after the filtering system at the 12-Mile Treatment Plant had a failure.

CRESTON, Ia. — Suanne Peterson lined up an hour before employees cracked the door on a tractor-trailer filled with drinking water.

"I knew it was going to be crazy," she said.

More than 150 people lined up Monday afternoon in Creston's Hy-Vee parking lot to grab a couple of free cases of bottled water. The Union County seat has been without drinkable water since Friday morning after a membrane filtration system failed at the Twelve Mile Water Plant.

The processing plant at Creston Water Works also supplies water across the region to customers of the Southern Iowa Rural Water Association, meaning Creston's outage has left Iowans in at least nine counties without drinking water.

Customers have been advised to boil the tap water before consuming it. The city's water supply may contain bacteria, viruses and parasites that can cause nausea, cramps, diarrhea and headaches.

The tap water is still suitable for bathing and safe for pets and livestock, said Dan McIntosh, general manager of the SIRWA and Creston Water Works' treatment plant.

And the water plant crew has worked 12 and 18-hour days to mitigate the problem, he said.

"The membranes are about $1 million," McIntosh said. "It's not something you can just keep on a shelf."

How did it fail?

But residents throughout the region remain frustrated.

Peterson, who lives in Creston, said communication has been hazy as rumors of a long-lasting outage swirled around town. She wished that the water utility had offered more notice so residents could have started boiling water earlier to stock up.

She said the water utility should have posted letters or called homes; instead, she found out about it on Facebook.

"It's a nuisance," she said. "It just would have been nice if we had been better informed. We would have had more time to prepare."

By Monday afternoon, she had already purchased 6 gallons of drinking water at the store. She was grateful for Hy-Vee's giveaway but knew it wouldn't last long.

"We go through it fast," she said. "With drinking water, even if it's boiled, I just don't trust it."

When will the water be drinkable?

Creston's water problem won't be fixed quickly.

The water utility had to order new membrane sets from a Hungarian supplier.

Before coming to the United States, the membranes are sent to a Canadian distribution center. And the EPA must approve their import to the United States.

The utility announced Tuesday that intervention from state and federal leaders has helped cut red tape to expedite shipping of the product. But McIntosh said the system still won't be up and running until at least the weekend.

Even then, not all customers will go online at once. And the utility must drain water towers and flush the system, McIntosh said. Officials will use fluoride to track the safe water from the unfiltered stuff.

Creston residents likely will get potable water first, followed by communities in the surrounding area that are served by SIRWA.

"It's going to be awhile," McIntosh said. "We'll know more after we get the treatment plant running."

Though the membranes have shown signs of wear lately, he said it's unclear why they all failed last week.

"It was all four membranes all at the same time," he said. "I wish we knew what happened, but we don't.

At Hy-Vee's water giveaway, people grumbled about the mounting cost of the outage.

In addition to buying bottled water, residents were paying for gas and electricity to boil water on their stoves. And they expected to still pay their monthly water bills in full.

McIntosh said the boards of Creston Water Works and SIRWA would have to determine whether to offer any kind of discount. But he said that water is "still available."

"If you stop and think, what you drink is a very, very small percentage of your water usage," he said. "But we know it's absolutely an inconvenience."

'People like a crisis'

All throughout Creston, taps were turned off as the water woes persisted.

The Windrow restaurant shut its doors, Walmart closed its deli and staff at Little Caesar's posted a sign warning customers they couldn't offer deep dish pizza or cheese bread.

Even Casey's General Stores closed its kitchens, meaning the stores couldn't offer their iconic pizza.

But others found ways to get by.

At the A&G Restaurant and Lounge across from Creston's historic downtown train depot, Brad Ringsdorf manned several bubbling pots of water after serving the lunch rush.

"It's a lot of fun," he said. "Just boiling water all day."

The restaurant had to boil all water used for cooking, drinking and washing dishes. With the ultra-fast industrial dishwasher sidelined, all menu items were going out on plastic and Styrofoam rather than ceramic dishes.

But business ramped up as customers had fewer options for lunch and dinner.

"It's definitely affecting business," Ringsdorf said. "It's picked up."

Next door, staff at Adam's Street Espresso were largely spared headaches thanks to their Culligan water filtration system.

But that hasn't stopped the morning masses from griping about the situation while they linger over coffee.

"People like a crisis," said owner Tara Hanson. "You've got people who aren't really worried about it, who say they grew up on well water. And you've got people who are panic-button happy."

And rumors of a months-long outage have swirled around town.

"We're a coffee shop, so we hear everything," Hanson said.

'There's a lot of frustration'

While people have found practical workarounds to the water situation, many are still upset over the mixed messages and hazy timeline coming from the water utility.

"There's a lot of frustration with the lack of communication," said Brian Davis, a member of Creston's city council and the assistant director of Creston's Hy-Vee store.

Hy-Vee donated nearly 20,000 gallons of bottled water to stores in Creston, Bedford and Mount Ayr. While the tractor-trailer ran out of donated water Tuesday morning, the store was still offering some bottles to customers for free in the store.

As a local elected official, Davis said he was just as unsure of when things would be back to normal.

"I've heard possibly by the end of this week and the end of next week," he said. "I've just been checking the local news on Facebook."

At Peterson's home in northeast Creston, she developed a system for boiling, cooling and storing water in her kitchen.

She remained leery of bathing in the water, worried that parasites or bacteria could still infect her through open wounds.

On the bright side, the water situation did land her an I-told-you-so win with her husband.

He has long teased her for holding on to the empty plastic containers from milk and Hawaiian Punch.

But now she feels vindicated as those bottles line her countertops filled with boiled water.

"For stuff like this," she said, "it's just nice to have them around."