The City of Salem’s water issues this summer served as a learning experience and research opportunity for Willamette University students whose families live in the area.
“They were told, hey, do not do this, like don’t boil the water or only use the water for daily tasks like washing the dishes and doing laundry and don’t use the water for cooking, but they weren’t explaining why you shouldn’t be doing those things,” said Espinoza, an incoming senior this year.
But when their community’s drinking water was suddenly and unexpectedly compromised, they started looking for answers.
“We were looking at the raw data the City of Salem was providing to the community, and our professor actually made graphs and we could see why the City of Salem responded the way they did,” said Vasquez.
Along with the students’ independent research, biologists with the City of Salem used Willamette’s lab to develop their early sampling protocols, because the lab offered access to equipment the city didn’t have yet.
Months after the discovery of the cyanotoxins, the city still doesn’t have answers to why the bacteria were present this year, or how they made it through the city’s treatment facility.
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