Schools adjust to water advisory

May 19, 2008 05:29 pm

— SELINSGROVE — Students at the Selinsgrove intermediate and middle schools had their routines changed up Monday because of a boil-water advisory.
The advisory was issued Sunday after water samples from Selinsgrove and Kreamer tested positive for coliform bacteria. A boil water advisory is in effect for customers in the following areas: Industrial Park Road and west, Susquehanna University and west, Magnolia Avenue and west (including Pine Meadows), Selinsgrove Intermediate and Middle schools, Linda and Melody Lane
At the Selinsgrove intermediate and middle schools, drinking fountains were wrapped in plastic and cordoned off with yellow caution tape.
District food service manager Kevin Oswald saw that ten-gallon jugs of water were brought to the schools’ cafeterias and physical education areas and school lunches were being served with disposable plates and utensils.
“In school there’s always some kind of challenge. Every day there’s a new twist that you have to deal with,” intermediate school Principal Terry Heintzelman said. “But it’s not the first time that I’ve ever been without water in a building. Hopefully it will be the last, but it wouldn’t shock me if it’s not.”
Coliform was detected in a routine sample taken at the Pine Meadows housing development along 18th Street, Selinsgrove borough manager John Bickhart said.
A boil-water advisory is triggered by the state Department of Environmental Protection when more than 100 colonies are detected in a single sample. According to Bickhart, the borough’s sample yielded 122 colonies.
DEP spokesman Dan Spadoni said four additional water samples must test clean in order for the boil-water advisory to be lifted.
This is the first time in Bickhart’s six years as borough manager that any portion of the borough has been under a boil-water advisory, he said.
Coliform is a bacteria found in the intestines of warm-blooded mammals and is a commonly-used bacterial indicator of the sanitary quality of water.
Given the depth of the borough’s wells — 400 to 500 feet — Bickhart is doubtful the bacteria is the source of surface contamination.
“There’s just no indication that there’s anything from the surface connected to our wells,” Bickhart said. “That may be the case in wells that are more shallow ... private, residential wells, but it would be a huge surprise to me to find out that we have that kind of an effect,” Bickhart said. “It’s most likely a problem in the collection of the sample or the testing of the samples.”
The new water sample were taken Monday morning and have been sent to Wilson Testing Labs in Shamokin. Bickhart said the results should be in this morning.
Though Selinsgrove Area School District officials said the boil-water advisory is an inconvenience, Superintendent Fred Johnson said it’s nothing they can’t handle, and may even serve as a lesson to the students.
“In a school district we have issues every day and one of the nice things about the job is that you never know what you’re to expect on any given day and this was today’s problem,” Johnson said. “I think actually this could be a great learning situation because so much of the world right now is in trouble with water and concerned for unsafe water and this is a great time maybe for the kids to experience a little of this in this kind of time.”

Photos

A water fountain in the Selinsgrove Area Middle School is cordoned off with yellow caution tape. The middle school and the intermediate school are affected by a boil-water advisory.