posted on May 2, 2016

Students at Meeker Elementary School have been drinking bottled water for more than a month now, and if the building’s water contamination problems do not clear up through continued chlorination, the district said as a last resort, it may consider replacing the building’s piping to get rid of the bacteria.

Students at Meeker Elementary School have been drinking bottled water for more than a month now, and if the building’s water contamination problems do not clear up through continued chlorination, the district said as a last resort, it may consider replacing the building’s piping to get rid of the bacteria.

Since the total coliform contamination was discovered at Meeker on March 30 through routine water quality sampling, the district has continued to chlorinate the building’s pipes to wear away the layers of bacteria in the pipes.

Gerry Peters, the district’s facilities planning and management director, said while the district was optimistic after samples on April 25 came back clean, sampling a couple of days later revealed there was still total coliform in the school’s water supply.

“It’s a very low level of bacteria,” Peters said during Monday’s facilities meeting.

The contamination does not include e. Coli, thus indicating the problem was not caused by sewage issues. The bacteria likely got into the building’s pipes during construction. The new Meeker building opened last fall.

While city of Ames staff have said total coliform will not make anyone who drinks the water sick, the school’s students and staff have continued to drink bottled water donated by Lowe’s Home Improvement as an extra precaution.

Peters said in his continued research, he has found no other way to rid the piping of the bacteria besides chlorination. Peters said if the chlorination is unsuccessful, the last-ditch effort would be the replace the piping; however, Peters said that would have to wait until school is out for the summer at the end of May because this would require shutting off all water to the school.

Peters said before he could feel confident the bacteria has been eradicated, he would have to see four consecutive negative tests and then monitor for an additional three weeks.

Also discussed at Monday’s facilities meeting was the continued discussions the district is having with the city, Iowa State University, Mary Greeley Medical Center and Heartland Senior Services about the development of a healthy living center, which would include a swimming pool.

“We haven’t really progressed very far,” Superintendent Tim Taylor said.

Espeset said discussions on the pool will be an important topic for the joint meeting the board is planning with the city council in mid-June.

“We need to be prepared as we can for this meeting,” Espeset said.

Other business:

n The district’s policy committee has been working on rewriting the policy surrounding community usage of district buildings and the rates these groups have to pay. The committee has been working approximately eight months on this rewrite and will bring the updated proposals to the May 9 school board meeting for discussion.

n On June 6, construction crews will work on replacing all of the windows at Meeker Elementary. When the windows were installed last year, the wrong kind of glass was put in and needs to be replaced to fit the approved building design.

n Peters said his department have been working on a drawing of the new facilities and bus storage building, which will be on display to the public at the new administration building in the coming weeks.