This is part of a series of articles we are posting this week to dive deeper into the 2015 Water Quality Report.  The goal is to help everyone understand how our staff test and confirm whether your water is safe.

Today we are going to talk about chlorine and bacteria. We test for both.

Bacteria are naturally present everywhere and are a vital part of our environment. Certain bacteria may also have negative health effects in drinking water. To ensure harmful bacteria does not grow during the trip from the treatment plant to your home,  we add a very small amount of chlorine to keep the water disinfected.

Your water averages about 1.2 parts per million of chlorine when it leaves the treatment plant. The EPA limit is four parts per million. AND one part per million is equal to a single penny in $10,000 OR one drop of water in a ten-gallon tank. This amount of chlorine disinfects the water but is not harmful.

The way we test for bacteria is by a positive/negative test. A positive water sample means bacteria are present in the sample. In 2015, the average number of samples that tested positive each month was 0.1% and the EPA limit is no more than 5% of samples. So you can see we were way below EPA limits.

You can be sure that your water is free from harmful bacteria and we use just enough chlorine to ensure that is the case.

If you ever have a water quality concern, please call us at 311.