I want to know why Heber Public Utility doesn’t make our water better, instead spending money on printing letters to send to the people saying how hazardous and dangerous it is? We pay our taxes so we expect clean water, not water that gives us dry skin, leaves white marks on our dishes, grass, fences and is hazardous to our health. — Blasting on Facebook, Heber
The simplest explanation is, the Heber Public Utility District is required by law to send out this letter to inform residents of the problem, or the past problem, we should say.
HPUD General Manager Laura Fischer said the water in Heber is safe and is no longer in violation of TTHMs, as the acronym is known in the letter.
TTHMs are total trihalomethanes, a byproduct of the chlorination process to clean water that occurs under certain conditions.
Before we explain how this happened, and why this is not a problem right now, Fischer wants the public to know that the immediate priority is to address the TTHM issue at the water plant.
The district was working on a plan to expand the water plant, but all eyes are now on solving the TTHM issue. A pre-application has been approved for a loan from the state’s revolving fund for the work, and Heber has some priority due to the economic conditions of the community.
As for how this happened, reporting nonattainment only occurs if an average of four consecutive quarterly TTHM-level reports comes back above the limit of 80 micrograms per liter. That average came back at 84.8 micrograms per liter.
During the third quarter of the year — the summer, really — the levels were so high for TTHMs that it skewed the average.
Fischer explained that during the testing process, the district is asked to take its water for sampling from the worst spot possible. In Heber’s case, that would be the farthest waterline from the plant, on a straight line, in an area with no more than 20 or so users of the water.
What that means, Fischer said, is the water is allowed to stagnate a bit because it isn’t a high-use area, which in turn means it ages and heats up in the summer, releasing a higher level of TTHMs.
Fischer said the district has been given some guidelines as to how to fix the problem.
“Temperature we can’t control, age we can control to some degree, and the treatment we can obviously control,” she said.
We can’t really answer the last questions about dry skin and white film other than to say the Imperial Valley’s water is hard, and this happens not just in Heber but in many places in the Valley.
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