Boiling Water

Sorry for another blackout question: why do we need to boil the water?

Some background: One of the consequences of SE Michigan’s blackout was the partial loss of the City of Detroit water supply, which supplies a great number of outlying communities with their treated water. Some communities lost their pressure completely, while at my house we were at 1/4 to 1/2 pressure during the affected period.

Every once in a while a water main will break. So, sure, crud gets into the supply system, dirties the water, and we all have to boil it prior to consumption. But in this case, what the heck infected the water supply? Is this a “just in case” thing, like maybe the low pressure caused some mains to break that we don’t know about yet? Or is there something else about low water pressure that would cause it to become infected? Like just about everywhere that has treated water, Detroit puts chlorine into it.

They’re even telling us to boil water for coffee. I didn’t this morning, and so far so good (knock on the wood-looking Formica on my desk here). In my pre-work-in-Mexico-counseling-at-the-hospital they told me brewed coffee was fine and would kill the nasty microbes, so I’m not too worried about my coffee yet.

You boil water to kill the bugs in it. According to this Agency,

I. DEFICIENCIES REQUIRING A BOIL WATER ORDER

  1.  Acute bacteria violation (fecal and/or E. Coli present  - issued after recheck samples are taken) or repeated    nonacute bacteria violations.
    
  2.  Turbidity MCL violation (turbidity above 5.49 NTU)
    
  3.  Unchlorinated surface water entering system from an approved source.
    
  4.  Unfiltered surface water entering system from an emergency back-up or other unapproved sources.
    
  5.  System without water or with negative pressure zones (see Appendix A).
    
  6.  No working chlorination on a system which is required to submit monthly chlorine residual reports to the DWP.
    
  7.  Dead animals (mice, rats, birds, etc.) observed in an unchlorinated groundwater source.
    
  8.  In lieu of routine sampling where chronic contamination has occurred.
    
  9.  Equipment failure resulting in inadequate disinfection and/or filtration of a surface water supply not immediately repairable.
    

Better safe than sorry - Boil your water!