Montgomery drinking water award a shocker.
They’ve had brown water and sediment running through their pipes for years.
“How can we possibly win that award, knowing we have brown water?” Berger asked.
He said the village has attempted to address the problem over the years, changing pipes, adding water softeners and conducting tests.
“We’re concerned for the residents down there,” he said.
It doesn’t happen overnight, unfortunately.” Berger, who ran unsuccessfully for Village Board in March, said Brescia should do more as both the village mayor and a county legislator.
Instead, residents like Berger and Mike Villegas spend their money on bottled water for drinking and cooking.
He said residents once brought brown tap water to a board meeting for board members to drink.
“So we asked, ‘Why are you telling us to drink it if you’re not going to drink it?’” Brescia said he doesn’t recall that.
Ericson said the county Health Department is running a yearlong test of the village’s five wells to ensure the manganese is the cause of the discoloration.

UPDATE: Some Walker County residents not alerted of boil water advisory.
UPDATE: Some North Georgia residents said more should have been done to notify them about a boil water advisory, after an untreated water sample tested positive for E. Coli.
If you get your water through the Walker County Water and Sewage Authority you are urged to boil it before you use it, or just use bottled water.
"I boil my water if I cook," explained Cade, "and for coffee I use bottled water."
"I found out about it on the news," explained McClain, "Nobody called me or nothing."
PREVIOUS STORY: Walker County residents said they are concerned after not getting enough notification about the boil water advisory, and some residents were not aware they were affected.
According to the Walker County public information officer, Joe Legge, residents were notified through the County’s alert system, if they were signed up.
PREVIOUS STORY: The EPD has lifted the boil water advisory for the City of LaFayette water customers.
Walker Co. Water & Sewage Authority customers are still under the advisory.
The boil water advisory only affects a portion of Walker County.

TAGS: Vending Times columnist, OCS salespeople, office coffee service, office coffee sales, OCS education, OCS customer service, coffee business, office refreshments, OCS sales training, Len Rashkin, pure-water service, selling water services to offices, summer OCS trends Hot weather is upon us again, and selling water cooler service will be paramount when you approach prospects and existing customers.
Your salespeople must be fully knowledgeable about both bottled water and filtration (point-of-use) cooler service.
If you’re selling water, the first area in which your salespeople need to be educated is the difference between drinking "spring water" and "purified water" that is processed at bottling plants.
bottles).
The water is pumped from the spring into holding tanks at the processing plant.
» F: Sealed top on cooler = B: Healthy, no airborne bacteria enter cooler, reduces sickness and absenteeism.
» Bulk water takes up no space in fridge and eliminates guessing whose bottle it is.
Explain that it’s only pennies per gallon, with high-quality water that is filtered by [the system used for your service] to remove many containments (each filtration system is different, so know your product).
Offer a free month trial and free installation.
LEN RASHKIN is a pioneer in office coffee service.

KETTLEMAN CITY – As residents of this hardscrabble Kings County town just off Interstate 5 continue their long wait for clean tap water, they hope to keep benefiting from a state program providing bottled water in the interim.
It’s been free of charge, thanks to a $10,000-a-month grant from the State Water Resources Control Board.
Residents say the bottled water program is a lifesaver as they wait for a new plant to be constructed.
The facility will take water out of the California Aqueduct, make sure it’s free of contaminants and pipe it into homes for drinking.
The new water supply is expected to be a huge improvement over the stuff coming out of the tap now.
The plant is expected to come on-line in late 2018 or early 2019, according to Joe McGahan, an engineer working on the project.
Residents reached by phone for comment Monday described the bottled water project as a life-saver.
She said without the state help, people who couldn’t afford the bottled water on their own "would be forced to drink water from the sink."
Kostyrko said the program will continue to receive funding up until the point when the new plant becomes operational.
The town, which doesn’t have enough income to pay for the $11 million facility, is relying on state and federal grants to get the work done.

The epicenter of the state’s drinking water catastrophe is in the San Joaquin Valley, where 200,000 people have struggled to obtain clean, safe water for decades.
Across California more than 1.5 million people rely on drinking water from a community system that has a water quality violation that could impact public health, according to an estimate by the state using 2015 data.
A further 166,000 people are connected to nearly 1,000 water systems serving just 75 to 300 people each.
“Small community water systems typically lack the infrastructure and economies of scale of larger water systems, and in some cases cannot afford to treat or find alternative supplies for a contaminated drinking water source,” an SWRCB report found.
There are 310,000 people living in 525 low-income, unincorporated communities in the San Joaquin Valley where water quality problems are common.
Seville, Quintana’s hometown, was among those listed.
But it’s a water system designed to feed the farms of the valley and the cities of southern California, not the region’s rural communities.
Lucy Hernandez lives in West Goshen in Tulare County, a community where the water is contaminated by high levels of nitrate.
“We’ve always had these problems.
But the more people you get involved, other communities, you have a bigger voice and people do listen.” In tiny Tombstone Territory, Carolina Garcia dreams of connecting her home’s water to the town of Sanger next door.

Major water main break impacts Barre City residents.
Residents in certain areas were asked to use other water sources like bottled water for cooking, drinking and bathing BARRE, Vt. — A water main break in the city of Barre has caused some disruptions in water service for some neighbors.
Barre city officials said a major water leak erupted at around 6 p.m. on Nelson Street.
They said city water department crews were notified and were working on the issue.
The repairs could last between eight and 12 hours.
They said the duration of the repair depends on how long it takes to find where the break exactly happened.
The city warned residents that water service could be impacted to those on the northeast side of Barre, including Nelson, Camp and Cassie Streets.
Residents in these areas were asked to use other water sources like bottled water for cooking, drinking and bathing.
The city said water may be cloudy once water service returns.
If that happens, they said residents should let the water run until clear.

Rather, East, whose district encompasses the small towns of Avenal and Kettleman City on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side, is worried about the safety of the water that the 2,700 students in his school district are being given to drink.
That’s because arsenic levels in the drinking water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times.
But in the San Joaquin Valley and other rural regions of California, residents either rely on private wells or small districts that lack the funds and infrastructure to treat contaminated drinking water.
Over the coming years this money will be used to install safe water systems in schools in disadvantaged communities.
They began talking to me about poor water quality – higher levels of arsenic and fertilizers.” In 2008 the United States Environmental Protection Agency cited Arvin Community Services District, which provides drinking water for the city and schools, for exceeding the maximum contaminant level for arsenic.
Dave Wallis, the technical services program manager at RCAC, says the group has helped install more than 170 filters in the Arvin area since 2015, including in six schools in three local school districts that serve nearly 6,000 students.
Since then, student attendance in Arvin’s schools has gone up, McClean says, and she believes annual physical fitness test results for students have also improved as fewer students have been drinking only sodas and more have begun drinking water on a regular basis.
“It’s great having the kids get the water they like to drink, and it’s helping out the overall health of everybody down there,” says Wallis.
For years, locals in Avenal have shied away from tap water – even before they knew about unsafe levels of disinfectant byproducts – bemoaning its taste and its rusty appearance, and digging into what little money they had to buy five-gallon jugs of bottled water, according to East.
Although food in Avenal schools is still cooked in the cafeteria with bottled water, over the past year, using grant money provided by a local agricultural produce company – the Wonderful Company – schools have installed point-of-use water fountains.

The evolution of the Dutch drinking water sector.
We just finished revisions of this paper to meet the deadline for a journal’s special issue, BUT we would love to hear you thoughts or feedback on the paper, the sector in the Netherlands, or how these themes relate to systems you know better.
We will surely have a chance to improve the paper (probably it’s accepted for the special issue and certainly if it isn’t ;), so please do send me your comments.
The evolution of the Dutch drinking water sector <== link to download David Zetland and Bene Colenbrander Abstract: Dutch drinking water companies (DWCs) have brought more water of better quality to more people over the past 160 years, but their institutional environment has changed with social priorities.
We divide these changes into four eras in which an initial solution leads to a new constraint that forces a change in priorities and thus DWC actions.
The first era begins around 1850 when polluted common pool water attracts sellers of drinking water as a private good.
Priorities changed around 1900 as the government pushed for a network expansion that would bring drinking water services to all as a public good.
The third era began around 1950 as strains on common-pool budgets and water supplies shifted the focus to rationalization and efficiency.
The fourth and current era began around 1970 with DWCs being asked to restore ecosystems and play a larger role in the community.
These shifts demonstrate how the path towards clean, safe drinking water may twist and turn as new opportunities eclipse past successes and changing priorities shift the relative costs and benefits of different actions.

Belmont residents still unable to drink tap water after coal ash spill.
BELMONT, N.C. – A sign was made because the area is on its 806th day of using bottled water, all because of a high-level toxic metal discovered in well-water.
Dozens of new homes are being built in his community.
Hundreds of people also drive by his house to get to Lake Wylie.
“I never had so many people stop in this yard and thank me,” Crawford said.
Duke Energy still claims coal ash basins aren’t impacting wells.
Crawford said he wants a solution, and to let people know the community is still left without one.
Duke Energy is being allowed to pass on the $55 million cost of cleaning up two polluted sites in Ohio to its customers.
The state supreme court said the Charlotte-based company can continue charging Ohio customers $1.67.
Right now, it doesn’t include Charlotte, but officials told Channel 9 they plan to ask for a rate hike in the Charlotte area, as well.

Walker County officials are still advising residents in some areas to boil their water before drinking it.
The advisory has been lifted for city of LaFayette water customers only, however the advisory remains in effect for Walker County Water & Sewerage Authority customers within the previously designated area.
In addition, water use restrictions remain in effect for all City of LaFayette and WCWSA customers, according to a release issued late Monday afternoon.
"It has taken several days to stabilize the system and pull and test samples to ensure there are no issues," said David Hamilton, LaFayette city manager.
Once well water has been influenced by surface water, it requires a type of filtration the Walker County Water Treatment Plant is not currently capable of treating.
While several short and long term solutions continue to be explored, a mobile water treatment system capable of filtering surface water is being trucked in.
It will take a number of days to connect the portable system to the Walker County Water Treatment Plant.
No non-commercial washing or pressure washing.
Household dishwashers are generally safe to use if the water reaches a final rinse temperature of at least 150 degrees or if the dishwasher has a sanitizing cycle.
Pets should also get boiled or bottled water to drink.