St. Charles County Department of Community
Health & The Environment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, May 21, 2002

CONTACTS:
Mike Duvall, Director - St. Charles County Division of Environmental Services
(636) 949-7415

Wellfield Water Testing to Continue as Feds Wind Down

Safe Water Supply

In a recent letter to the editor, local dentist Dr. Michael Garvey expressed concern about ongoing sampling of the well field providing water to the county's water treatment plant.

The St. Charles County Division of Environmental Services has paid very close attention to the cleanup of the Weldon Spring site being carried out by the federal government. One of the main areas we have watched is the water supply well field used by the county water plant.
The abandoned quarry that had shown levels of contamination has been completely cleaned up. The federal, state and county governments drilled test or monitor wells into the area of shallow groundwater due to the quarry's close proximity to the county's existing water production/supply wells. In fact, more than fifty monitor wells are in place around the entire cleanup project.

Besides the frequent and ongoing water sampling done over nearly two decades by the federal government and the State of Missouri, the county's Division of Environmental Services also draws test samples on a monthly and quarterly basis from the production/supply wells, and monitor wells in the area. The collected samples are sent to private labs for testing and the assessments are reported to the State of Missouri, to utilities that buy the finished drinking water, and to any other interested party. Water drawn from the production/supply wells by the St. Charles County Water Plant is also tested before and after purification before drinking water is distributed. All of these tests are extensive and the results are public record. Citizens interested in the plant are encouraged to review them at any time.

All of these tests have shown that drinking water supplied by St. Charles County's water plant is safe. In addition, St. Charles County Government will continue testing the production/supply wells and the drinking water, even if other government agencies discontinue funding for this purpose. It is the county's intent to ensure that the water you drink is always of very high quality. If signs of contamination are detected in the future, the federal government would take responsibility for additional cleanup of the groundwater, provide treatment of our supply wells, or relocation of the wells to an area further upstream in order to eliminate any risk to our drinking water supply.

St. Charles County Government plans to continue this testing and monitoring program and to insist that the state and federal government do likewise to ensure that our citizen's health and the environment are protected.

Mike Duvall
Director, St. Charles County Division of Environmental Services

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