Residents fail to receive boil advisory on time

Junior Kristen Blackburn was surprised to learn last Thursday that the city of Kirksville had issued a 48-hour water boil alert for her block of Jefferson Street after a water main was damaged in a car accident that happened just outside her front door.

From Oct. 4 to 6, a water boil advisory was in effect for the two blocks of East Jefferson Street between High Street and Florence Street. However, many residents were unaware they should take the precaution of boiling their water until after the advisory expired, because they did not receive a direct notice from the public works department or the Adair County 911 center.

When a boil advisory is issued, residents are encouraged to boil drinking water to kill potential contamination like the bacteria E. coli, which can cause stomachaches, vomiting and diarrhea.

John Buckwalter, director of the Kirksville public works department, said the city issues a 48-hour boil advisory for specific sections of the city anytime it repairs or replaces a section of the water main while the department tests water samples for contamination in its laboratory. If the water sample is not contaminated, which is almost always the case, the boil advisory expires, he said. Buckwalter said the department usually distributes door hanger notifications when small areas of town are under boil advisories.

Chris Killday, director of the Adair County 911 center, said the center uses automated phone calls to notify residents when boil advisories go into effect. She said the public works department distributes door hangers, and that announcements run on TV and radio.

However, during the most recent water boil advisory, many residents said they did not receive automated phone calls or door hangers, and the KTVO newsroom said it did not run a story on the boil order.

Students at six different residences on Jefferson Street between High and Florence said they never received door hangers to notify them of the water boil advisory. All of the students interviewed also said they do not have landline connections, meaning they could not have been reached by an automated call from the 911 center.

Based on data from this semester's address and phone number verification, 17.65 percent of students registered a landline phone number, said Kasey Graves, system administrator for Information Technology Services.

There is only one land line registered with the 911 center for the two blocks of Jefferson that were under the boil advisory, Killday said. The owner of the only phone line in the two-block area, who did not want to be identified, she said she did not receive an automated call on Oct. 4.

Killday said the 911 center normally notifies residents of a boil advisory with phone calls, but that there were problems with the automated call system earlier in last week. She could not confirm that the system problems were the reason for the lack of notification.

Jefferson Street residents who did know about the boil advisory while it was in effect said they found the information online. A notice of the boil advisory was posted on the city of Kirksville homepage Oct. 4, and the Kirksville Daily Express website posted an alert that same day.

Senior Shannon Farias said she received an e-mail from her grandmother about the boil alert Oct. 5, a day after the order had gone into effect. Farias said she does not have a land line or TV and that she never got a door hanger notice.

Senior Erin Done also found the information online after the boil order had already gone into effect, but not directly from the city.

"I was doing homework, and I ended up on the KTVO or Kirksville Daily Express website, and it said ‘boil for this block of Jefferson,' and we got nothing - no phone call, nothing on our door," Done said.

Since mid-August, there have been eight boil advisories. None of those have been extended past the 48-hour testing period, which means that none of the water samples have been contaminated.

Residents interviewed in areas affected by boil alerts in the recent past said they were not notified by phone or by door notices that an advisory was in effect. The exception was Jamie Wolf, who said he signed up to receive text message alerts on the city of Kirksville website.

Buckwalter said the number of recent boil advisories is a little higher than normal because the public works department has been doing an increased amount of construction on the water mains in residential areas recently. He said that every year the city tries to replace 10,000 feet of old or undersized lines, or lines that have a history of failure.

Buckwalter said water lines, especially older lines that were installed from the 1920s to 1950s, fail because of internal and external pressure on the pipes.

"If we have to fight a fire and a number of hydrants have to be turned on and off very quickly, then there'll be a surge in the line, and that may cause a pressure surge that may cause a line to break," he said.

Buckwalter said changes in the moisture content in the soil can also cause pipes to fail, because the ground swells with rainwater and shrinks away from the pipe as it dries.

The next water main scheduled to be replaced is on LaHarpe Street between First and Franklin, Buckwalter said. He said residents of that section of LaHarpe can expect to be under a water boil advisory in the next two to three weeks, after workers finish installing the new line and water flow is redirected into the new pipe.

Killday said land lines are automatically registered with the Adair County 911 Center, and that if students without land lines in their homes want to receive notice of water boil advisories, they can register their cell phone numbers on the city of Kirksville website, at the Kirksville Fire Department or at the Police Department.