Goodrich – It won’t be long before students at the Goodrich High School will be able to use the drinking fountains again.
Sunshine Water Treatment has been providing bottled water to the school since April 3 when arsenic levels exceeding 10 ppb were detected in the water. In 2006, Linden-based Sunshine Water Treatment, at a cost of $91,350, provided and installed a filtration system to reduce arsenic levels below the 10 ppb level required by the Department of Environmental Quality. The arsenic levels were to be lowered from 50 ppb.
Since then, the arsenic levels in the school’s water had fluctuated near acceptable amounts.
On Nov. 22, Sunshine was granted DEQ approval to change the material in the tanks. Michael Floeter, general manager of Sunshine, said it will only be a couple of weeks before the water will be on tap again.
‘We pilot tested another material by using G2-R, which National Sanitation (a third party testing, non-profit institution in the water treatment industry) listed as being successful under a pilot study, which brings the arsenic level down to non-detectable. Right now, we are waiting for the material to be made. Then we will reline the tanks with that material. We have been just as anxious as anyone to get this done because providing bottled water to the school has been expensive for us,? said Floeter.
Brian Walton, director of special services at the high school said Sunshine and the DEQ wanted a permanent solution, not a temporary one.
‘The hold-up has been the DEQ. They wanted to make sure that anything we were putting in the water was safe, and they have been very picky about what they will allow,? said Walton.
Goodrich hasn’t been the only community with the problem. The Environmental Protection Agency says Michigan has more than 75 communities that have arsenic concentrations of at least twice the new limit.
The EPA reports that arsenic is a semi-metal element that is odorless and tasteless. It enters drinking water supplies from natural deposits in the earth or from agricultural and industrial practices.