Residents want town to get rust out of their water

Missy Schrader pays $1.75 a load at a self-serve laundry every week to clean her family's light-colored clothing, because the mineral-loaded town water at her North Central Street home turns them orange.

"I don't buy white socks or underwear anymore because it's just not worth it," Schrader said. "I even wear colored socks at the gym. I look like a geek, but it's better than looking like I'm wearing dirty socks."

Schrader said she has been asking East Bridgewater officials to do something about the rust-colored water for two years.

"I started noticing it in September of 2002 when I had my first child and boiled water for his formula," she said. "I saw a skim of rust on top of the boiled water. At first, I thought my pans were disintegrating."

Schrader said she now uses bottled spring water for drinking and for cooking. A neighbor, Carol Pilkington, said she finally installed a water-filtration system that cost about $2,500.

"It was expensive, but it's working really well," Pilkington said. "Before that, the water looked like watered-down iced tea and had a metally taste to it. I would watch the water fill up in the washer and decide whether I could put in whites. If I used a rust removal product, it would work well, but it would eat the clothes."

Town Water Superintendent Scott McCann said his department is working with a Norwell engineering firm to address the problem, and a program should be ready to implement this fall. McCann said the department has been battling the problem since 1998, when it began injecting a lime mixture into water pumped from the town's five wells to comply with federal drinking water standards for pH balance.

"The water in the Northeast is very acidic, so we have to neutralize it," he said. "The water from our wells has a pH of 5.8 to 6.0 when it needs to be around 7. We looked at ways to raise the pH balance and decided to use the lime because it's the easiest to handle."

Because the lime made the town's water less acidic, pipe breaks dropped from about 220 per year down to an average of seven, McCann said. But the lime also softened iron and manganese deposits caked to the town's pipe system, allowing some of it to break free and mix into the water.

"It started happening about two years ago when it got very cold in the winter," McCann said. "That's when water use drops and the lime is just sitting in the pipes, softening the mineral deposits. Some of our pipes are up to 100 years old, so the minerals have been building up all that time."

Each summer the water department flushes hydrants across town, a process that "causes the water to rush through the pipe" and pull sediment with it, according to McCann. But that has done little to improve the discoloration of the water. McCann said the department in the spring hired Coler and Colantonio Inc., of Norwell, to design a system to make hydrant flushing more effective. The company had recently solved water discoloration problems in Kingston and Hanson, McCann said.

Coler and Colantonio engineer Mark Devine said the company provides towns with a methodical way of flushing. The water mains, shut-off valves, and hydrants are mapped, he said, and "then the mains are flushed in one direction, using a process that involves closing valves and isolating sections. As you progress, you move along the sediment and build-up and eventually remove it."

Devine said the program, which will cost the town $13,000, should be ready by the fall.

McCann's crews last month flushed all of the town's hydrants using a modified version of Devine's method.

"We tried to isolate single areas at a time ourselves," he said. He said the flushing was effective, particularly in the northwest part of town where discolored water had been especially severe.

But Schrader said her water has not improved. "I have noticed zero difference," she said. "The water has been exactly the same."

Mary Ahern, who lives near the water department on Keith Place, said her water also has not cleared. Ahern said she has gone several times to the water department for help and has been given a packet of rust remover that disintegrates her clothes.

"I can sympathize to a point with [McCann], and then I can't sympathize any more," she said.

McCann said hydrant-flushing efforts are largely on hold for now, until the town starts the Coler and Colantonio program in a few months.

"We might do isolated areas," he said. "We'll hit the areas that are real problematic."