MVWD is committed to water quality
Earlier this month, MVWD published its annual water quality report to let the public know what harmful compounds might be hiding away in the community’s drinking water. Over the past year, in compliance with all state and federal regulations, district staff has rigorously tested its system for 50 possible contaminants. The results of all of those tests have come back well within the federally required limits.
“Our water sources are fairly pure coming right out of the ground,” said MVWD General Manager Joe Davis. “We do very little treatment for any contaminants because there isn’t much. Before the water goes into our system we just add a little chlorine to protect against microbial contaminants. So we have had a really good record of clean water all throughout the district’s history.”
Despite this, the MVWD staff takes great pains to complete the testing accurately each year. Much of the mandatory testing is pretty straight forward. But there are a few contaminants in the list that have rather exacting test requirements.
“Some of the tests are really sensitive,” said MVWD Operations Manager Kiley Bradshaw, who performs most of the water quality sampling. “For example, there is one test where you aren’t supposed to have used fabric softener on your clothes. Or you have to only use a certain pen to fill out the information as you do the test. On one of the tests, if the wind is blowing, it will contaminate your sample. So on those, you have to keep pretty tight controls on the test.”
In the upcoming year, the district will be on schedule to perform testing for lead and copper which EPA regulation mandates for every three years. The last time this testing was done was in 2022.
“We have no lead or copper line in our system so it is really a non-issue for us system-wide,” Davis said. “But we do have some homes here and there in our service territory that were built during a certain time period when they were using those materials. So we are required to test water from a sample population of those homes.”
District staff will be dropping off sample kits at about 20 of these targeted residences. The homeowner is asked to follow detailed instructions to collect a clean water sample. Then these samples are collected by MVWD staff and sent out to be tested. In the past, these tests have always come back within the required regulatory limits.
“We take water quality very seriously,” Davis said. “There is a lot of time and effort that our staff puts into our system to keep it in compliance. And there is careful attention placed into performing these tests accurately. All of that has shown in our results over the years. Our customers can rest assured that our water is safe and that our quality testing is rigorous.”
Click here to read this year’s full MVWD Water Quality Report.