Eagle Mountain residents told not to drink the water
-by Barbara Christiansen, originally posted on September 29, 2014
EAGLE MOUNTAIN — Residents have been cautioned not to use city water for drinking, cooking, showering or brushing teeth.
Monday afternoon, a resident walking in the foothills discovered a breach at one of the city’s water storage tanks and notified city workers that a lock had been cut at the access to the tank. Law enforcement officials are investigating. The tank was immediately isolated and the water is not entering the city’s system.
Samples of the water from the breached tank have been sent to a laboratory and the results are expected back by Tuesday evening.
“We feel we are being overly cautious,” public works director Dave Norman said. “We are hopeful that everything comes up clean. We don’t have any reason to believe there is a problem.”
The approximately 25,000 residents in 6,600 households were sent notices from an email list the city had compiled. There were also notices on Facebook, Twitter and the city website. They sent notices to the Utah County Health Department and the Utah Division of Drinking Water.
“We don’t know if there is any cause for concern,” said Linda Peterson, the Eagle Mountain public information director. “As soon as we get the test results in, we will provide updates on any type of mandatory restrictions.”
Eagle Mountain has five water storage tanks. The affected one held 2 million gallons at capacity. The others are a 2 million, two 1 million and a 600,000-gallon tank.
“We will be notifying people, probably late Tuesday afternoon or early Tuesday evening, Norman said.