Since late June, the village of Cadiz – which sits in the rolling hills of Harrison County near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border – has warned its 3,400 residents that their water is unsafe for drinking, cooking and brushing teeth.
Officials there say they’ve detected dangerously high rates of turbidity – a concentration of undissolved particles of soil, algae and other matter in the water, which they’ve attributed to a filter malfunction at the water treatment plant. They also cited temperamental weather patterns, including extended droughts last year and frequent, heavy downpours this year.
The village mayor, Kevin Jones, said officials are working nights and weekends, trying to figure out what’s wrong so they can lift the order. Until then, people and businesses are going through crate after crate of bottled water, filling up from a water truck stationed downtown, and leaning on friends and family to let them visit for a hot shower.
At an emergency meeting late Tuesday night, the village voted to spend $148,000 on new filters. If the new filters fix the problem, water service might be fully restored next week, Jones said in an interview.
Cadiz draws its water from Tappan Lake, a 2,350 acre expanse popular for fishing and boating and not far from a host of different fracking wells for natural gas. Jones said the heavy rains of late have stirred up the lake bed and overwhelmed the system.
“We’ve gotten 26 inches of rain since March,” he said. “When it rains like two inches an hour, like it has several times in that period, that really puts a lot of sediment into Tappan Lake.”
Dirty water with a funky smell and hint of sheen
The cloudy water is a sign of turbidity, essentially dirt and other organic matter sloshing around, which creates an environment that can host bacteria or waterborne disease, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
“Cadiz is working with engineers, contractors, and the company that designed the water plant to identify and correct the issue,” said Dina Pierce, a spokeswoman for the agency. “The boil advisory will remain in effect until Cadiz can determine the cause, make necessary repairs, and reduce turbidity to an acceptable level.”
In the meantime, local Facebook groups are rife with people posting pictures of cloudy, yellowish jugs of water with foul scents or pictures of dirty water filters. A local hair salon is offering a “crystal gel treatment” it claims will remove calcium, chlorine, rust, magnesium, iron, well water stains, and “environmental residue.”
Cody Mattern has lived in Cadiz all his life. Around late June, he started noticing slimy, oily crud on his water filters at home. He started posting pictures of them after five to 12 days of use, and they were mucky enough to make the local news. His parents’ house seems to have it worse than he does. Even after boiling the water there, he said there’s still a rainbow sheen on top.
“I mean, it was a slimy, oily feeling. It felt like algae, it looked like algae, dirt, mud, whatever you want to call it,” he said of his water filters.
His 3-year-old daughter began showing some signs of skin irritation from bathing at home, he said. Showers at his in-law’s house ten minutes away (on a different water system) seemed to clear things up. School starts for his older child at the end of the month and he’s hopeful, but perhaps not optimistic, things get cleared up.
Signal Statewide cannot independently verify the health claims. But at a village council meeting last month, several angry residents said they were seeing mud, dirt, gunk, and oil in the water, according to a WTOV9 report. One woman blamed the dirty water for an infected wound on her son’s foot.
‘You gotta wash’
The boil water advisory is a burden for restaurants. A new Dunkin Donuts opened in town last month, though a manager said she’d need to speak to the chain’s corporate office before she could grant an interview. Other restaurant owners around town couldn’t be reached or declined comment.
John Maxwell, 54, from Cadiz, has been picking up bottled water from the village for cooking, drinking and brushing his teeth. But he’s still showering and doing laundry like he always does.
“You gotta wash your clothes, and you gotta take a bath,” he said. “What else are you gonna do? If you ain’t got family around to help you, you gotta get a shower and stuff and do stuff on your own.”
He thanked the village for knocking $25 off the water bill in August and September. He heard the water will be out for two months, so he’s sitting tight in the meantime.
One Cadiz local, who asked to not be named, described turning on the tap and seeing water dark and murky water that smells like lakewater.
“I didn’t think that it would last this long,” the resident said. “I know they’re doing the best they can to figure it out. But it sounds bigger than anybody expected.”
State, county politicians stay quiet
The three members on the Harrison County Commission didn’t respond to interview requests about the situation, nor did Sen. Brian Chavez, who represents Cadiz.
Rep. Ty Moore, who represents the village in the Ohio House, said through a spokesman he doesn’t have any further information but he’s “aware of the situation and is working with county officials.”
Despite the health guidance, not everyone is following the boil water advisory to the letter. Jones, the mayor, said he was drinking the water from his tap until about three days ago. He has already survived a lung transplant and double bypass, so he’s not sweating the turbidity. (Some residents said in interviews they doubted his claim was true.)
Cindy Maxwell Zende, of Cadiz, gets her water from a private well, so she’s largely unaffected. But she said her family gets city water and thought the boil water advisory would have been lifted weeks ago. They’ve used the water from time to time, and paid the price.
“My cousin, she just said she washed her hair the other day and her head was so itchy from the water,” she said. (Zende’s cousin, through Zende, declined to be interviewed.)
“Everybody’s really trying to not use it at all since it’s muddy, but there’s just so many little things.”
