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John Hollenhorst ReportingWould you get a little panicky if you heard there's arsenic in your drinking water? Well, in lots of places in Utah, the poison is there, in extremely tiny amounts. The margin between what's unhealthy and what's acceptable is causing major headaches for water system operators.
We talked to a Utah County woman today who's very concerned about arsenic. Her family insists on using bottled water when they visit, but officials say there's really no reason to worry.
About three dozen Utah water systems essentially missed a deadline on January 23rd. They were supposed to lower their arsenic concentration enough to meet strict new federal health standards. But the state agreed to give them three more years to work on the problem. That's because federal and state experts agree the actual health threat, in the short-term, is insignificant.
Eagle Mountain's water system is a good example. The well in this pumphouse used to be in compliance with the old federal arsenic standard of 50 parts per billion. But it's just a little worse than the new standard of 10 parts per billion. City officials say they've resolved the problem by shutting down the well part of the time and diluting it when they need to use it.
Chris Hillman, Eagle Mountain City Administrator: "When we do turn on that well, we will continue to monitor it to be sure the water that comes out of that well is safe. The city feels fortunate enough that our issue here is one that we can easily mitigate right now. We have enough other wells that we can turn on and then turn this one off."
Don Lore, Utah Division of Drinking Water: "This is a very scary issue for people. They hear arsenic, they think rat poison, they think this is terrible. But they're not looking at the fact that we're talking trace amounts, 10 parts per billion, a teaspoon in a million gallons."
Utah has more of a problem than many states because the arsenic occurs naturally in mineralized geology. The state is requiring water systems to report semi-annually on their progress in meeting the new health standard.
