SARTELL — Residents of Sartell Mobile Home Park were notified their water may be contaminated with E.coli bacteria Wednesday night.
That is, if they had water at all.
It urged residents to boil all water first before drinking it.
Tuesday afternoon the home was moved to access the burst line.
However, even when the water is restored the residents will need the state health department to test it to confirm it’s safe to drink, especially with the latest warning of bacteria.
Kim Larsen, district engineer for the Minnesota Department of Health, had not been made aware of the water issue at the park until receiving a call for interview from the Times Wednesday morning.
The inspection found "the current shelter is moldy and it is our understanding that the City of Sartell no longer approves of the plan to shelter."
Inspectors posed action to the park to "provide a flow test" to ensure the system can supply the required minimum of 150 gallons of water a day to each home.
For the water issue this was Aug. 31, 2017; The storm shelter was to be fixed by Dec. 31, 2017.
But now with bacteria and E.coli on the line, residents of Sartell Mobile Home Park should wait until tests come back showing water is clean and drinkable.

A new report by Twaweza has shown that more Ugandans lack access to clean and safe water.
Releasing key findings of the research carried out between January and February this year titled “Ugandans experiences and opinions on affordable access to clean and safe water”, the lead researcher Marie Nanyanzi said 40% of the poor and rural people still find it hard to access safe water compared to the urban rich.
She attributes the situation mainly to the shortage of water points and the long distance to the available ones.
Nanyanzi meanwhile says 74% of the households in the country were found to be getting drinking water from an improved source with access to piped water standing at only 15% in rural areas and 46% in urban areas.
She adds that the trend of people using rain water as their main source of drinking water has tremendously gone down.
These study findings however contradict the latest Uganda Bureau of statistics which indicated that access to water is improving in the country especially in rural areas.

The NRDC and NEW Caucus allege that city officials have failed to implement adequate water quality and treatment systems to prevent lead from getting into drinking water and that the city is failing to comply with federal requirements for monitoring and testing.
The city’s own data, the NRDC says, shows that 10 percent of water samples had elevated lead levels of 26 parts per billion, well above the Safe Drinking Water Act’s “federal action level” of 15 ppb.
The NRDC also says that Newark’s water testing procedures aren’t prioritizing high-risk sites, which it is required to do under federal law, NJ.com said.
“However, for many working-class people, it’s not.
By joining this lawsuit, we hope to hold the city and state governments accountable for providing safe drinking water to every home and school in Newark,” But city officials contend the problem is overblown.
“It is our goal to be transparent and keep our residents informed every step of the way.” The NRDC says in its lawsuit, however, that “the City does not know the scope of the problem because it has failed to identify which service lines contain lead, and has failed to properly monitor lead levels at Newark residents’ taps.” In April, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka told the Associated Press that the elevated lead fears were a “naked political stunt” to help a council member’s mayoral campaign.
There is no safe level of lead contamination.
In spring 2016, water fountains in 30 Newark public schools were found to have high levels of lead, and state officials shut off those fountains until the pipes could be replaced and filters installed.
The group is hoping for similar results in the Newark case.
In a statement, NRDC attorney Claire Woods said, “City and state officials are failing to take the steps required under the law to protect Newark residents from lead in their drinking water.

Yet, since that language was adopted in 1971, state lawmakers have been steadily backsliding on that promise in the most critical of areas: public access to clean and safe drinking water.
The numbers are shocking: Between 2008 and 2012, state funding for the DEP was nearly halved, dropping from $229 million to $125 million.
During that drop, the DEP lost 750 inspectors, who are carrying an average inspection workload of 149 water systems each.
The same budget cuts that hit the inspection side also impacted enforcement.
In fiscal year 2017, state inspectors visited about 19 percent of the state’s water systems, well below the national average of 37 percent, McKelvey wrote.
Tom Wolf signed into law last week includes a $5.6 million funding increase for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Those trainee hires, who would replace the aging, veteran inspectors who are moving toward retirement age, would eventually bring the DEP down to a more manageable workload of 100 to 125 water systems for each inspector.
The DEP needs at least 85 more inspectors to reach its ideal complement of 67 water systems per-inspector.
At an average cost of $40,000 per inspector, lawmakers would need cough up an extra $3.4 million a year.
It’s time for Harrisburg to live up to that trust.

The water issue was again brought up by Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad recently, and it has been a source of dispute between the two countries.
Our dependence on Malaysia’s water has political disadvantages, and this could still cloud bilateral relations.
It is, therefore, a timely reminder of the importance of water conservation.
We should not take for granted the easy access of water in tiny Singapore, which has no natural resources.
Singapore is not without constraints despite investing heavily in technology to reduce reliance on water from Malaysia.
It also does not have enough land to rely on rainfall as a water source, for instance.
Unlike the older generation of residents who have been through water rationing in the 1960s, younger Singaporeans show little particular zeal for water conservation.
The days without flush toilets are long forgotten.
We seem to take for granted that clean drinking water is at the nearest tap.
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Up to 2,000 homes were left without water for 48-hours during the hot weather.
Scores of households in Telford, Shropshire, had no water supply after Severn Trent Water reported a fault at one of its reservoirs.
The company has apologised for the temporary drought.
We had enough water in the kettle to make a drink this morning but we haven’t been able to have a wash or shower this morning so we’re all quite smelly."
Shaun Davies, leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, who has a young family and lives in Dawley, said: "Our water is off at the moment as well.
"Severn Trent has now agreed to distribute water to vulnerable customers and the council has opened leisure centres and some schools for people to access water.
Lessons need to be learned."
Severn Trent said it had discovered an issue at one of the service reservoirs, which may have caused issues in the Whitchurch area.
Report The firm said teams of engineers had been out clearing air locks from the network to get the water moving again.
Report Water supply was restored for residents of Much Wenlock by Wednesday morning.

The head of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department says a portion of Michigan’s new lead and copper rule is an “unfunded mandate”— and one that Detroit can’t comply with without some help from state and local government.
Gary Brown says the department can’t replace all Detroit’s estimated 125,000 lead service lines in the next 20 years, as the rule requires, without double-digit rate hikes.
Brown told the Detroit City Council Tuesday that would make water service unaffordable in a city where many already struggle to pay for it.
And he suggested it could violate Michigan law by charging all customers to pay for a project only some will benefit from, rather than rates based solely on water and water sewer usage.
We can’t pass this cost on in rates that would make water unaffordable.” DWSD projects that digging up and replacing Detroit’s lead service lines will cost $600-$750 million.
“We’re not having a lot of success” getting homeowners to allow access to their private line, Brown told the City Council.
For that reason, Brown wants the city to make legal changes giving the water department access to them.
“The two major dilemmas are, how do we pay for [lead service line removal], and how do we remove the legal obstacles to allow me to take control of the private side of the line,” Brown said.
Brown emphasized that Detroit’s water is currently testing well below the state’s new threshold for lead in drinking water, which is 12 parts per billion.
But the new Michigan Department of Environmental Quality rule requires all water utilities to remove lead service lines anyway — despite pushback from utilities and local units of government insisting they shouldn’t have to bear the entire burden of a project that will “cost millions to local communities with unknown benefit.”

In Swanzey, there is no town-owned water system, but instead a patchwork of small public water systems, a privately-owned supplier, a water and fire precinct and private residential wells.
“We’re really very fortunate that the people who were in charge of Keene’s water at that time really understood the importance of owning land around your water supply before it was well documented,” she said.
Balancing act While Keene awaits its watershed management plan, Swanzey officials are pondering their next steps after receiving the town’s source water protection plan recently.
The transmissivity — or rate at which groundwater moves horizontally through these aquifers — ranges from zero to slightly more than 4,000 feet per day, according to the plan.
Paul Susca, supervisor of the planning unit in the state’s drinking water and ground water bureau, said ordinances and zoning restrictions are ways to keep drinking water sources protected.
While contamination is a concern for public and private water systems, it’s much more of a worry with private wells because homeowners don’t often think to test them, Susca said.
Being proactive While the state has a program to regulate the more-hazardous land uses and activities near drinking water sources such as underground storage tanks and solid waste landfills, there are options available to cities and towns, with local land-use regulations and other programs, Susca said.
In Hinsdale, town officials just try to stay on top of things, water and sewer Superintendent Dennis J. Nadeau said.
Granite State Rural Water Association did a source water protection plan for the town in 2015.
One of the report’s conclusions states that while the community has two public drinking water systems that are atop high quality and productive aquifers, the systems face challenges from historic and potential land uses.

In Kinshasa, the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the vast majority of the population has access to “improved” water.
Yet it is increasingly clear that “improved” water is not enough; when the 2017 DRC WASH Poverty Diagnostic tested water quality in over 1,600 households in Kinshasa, water samples from nearly 40% of improved sources were still contaminated with fecal E. Coli Bacteria at point of use.
Ensuring water supply is not just “improved” but truly clean is a critical public health priority.
While the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDG) merely aimed to increase access to “improved” water, the SDGs target “safely managed” water that is not just improved, but on premises, available when needed, and – critically – “free from contamination”.
Applying this target to our work in the water sector in developing countries, a number of steps could be taken to improve our impact on the critical aspect of water quality: Updating Results Indicators: Despite the new SDGs, many sector interventions continue to target merely “improved” water.
A simple step would be to replace “improved” water targets with the aim of “safely managed” water.
This core indicator could then be matched by intermediate indicators targeting more specific quality related results, for example, regular water quality testing and publication of results by utilities and a certain percentage of samples confirmed to be clean at source or at point-of-use.
Targeting Point of Use: Contamination is a problem not only during water production and distribution, but on the last mile from point of collection to household storage, until the water is actually consumed.
Programs targeting treatment of water at point-of-use, for instance, by raising awareness of the disease link and promoting boiling, filters, or chlorine treatment, can be important bridge-interventions, where no proper infrastructure exists.
Focusing on child malnutrition could be a cross-sectoral rallying point to maximizing the impact of WASH interventions on human development by combining it more effectively with education, health, and nutrition programs.

MANISTEE — The Manistee Conservation District, as part of its Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP), will be offering free nitrate testing service from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on July 11.
Infants younger than 6 months old are particularly susceptible to nitrate poisoning.
Instead, they depend on bacteria present in their digestive system at birth to help them break down food.
Generally, by the time infants reach the age of 6 months, hydrochloric acid levels in their stomachs rise and kill most of the bacteria that convert nitrate to nitrite.
Doctors now recommend using bottled water to make formula when nitrogen levels exceed the U.S. Public Health Service drinking water standard of 10 parts per million.
Samples must be less than 48 hours old for a valid nitrate result: • Fill out the Well Water Information Form which can be found at www.manisteecd2.org and clicking the button on Well Water Testing on the Home page.
Rinse the sample bottle and lid thoroughly in the water to be sampled; then fill and cap the bottle; • Label a clean glass bottle or mason jar clearly with your name, the sampling date and the well name (cottage well, Mom’s well, etc.)
Those who participate can expect to be mailed a copy of the results in 8 to 10 weeks, with information about what to do if the concentration of nitrate or nitrite is too high.
Be sure to fill out the private well form completely before bringing it in, with the water sample, to the drop-off.
With questions or for more information, contact the Manistee Conservation District Office at (231) 889-9666 or email MAEAP Technician, Jamie VanDerZanden, at jamie.vanderzanden@macd.org.