Water district officials note that the wells in question were not regularly being used to provide water for HBWD customers during the first quarter.
It was not tested during the first quarter of 2017, as the Health Department had requested, but it also provided no water to the district’s system.
But Well 1-2 was used little after the October 2016 test; it was not used from early October through early June 2017, with the exception of one day in January.
The next time the well was tested, was between June 28 and July 14, the reading had jumped above the EPA threshold, at 85.89 ppt.
Well 1-3 was tested three times in 2016, with the results falling below the 70 ppt threshold each time.
D&B Principal Engineer Anthony Conetta, who has decades of experience monitoring water districts, and Warren Booth, a maintenance crew leader for the water district, explained during a Town Board work session earlier this month that the failure to test the wells in the first quarter of 2017 was an oversight.
Mr. Conetta and Mr. Booth also explained during the May 10 work session that because the chemicals are unregulated, the district was not obligated to turn off the wells.
No fines can be issued for serving customers water with unregulated chemical contamination, because the threshold is only advisory.
After the contamination was detected and the wells were shut off last year, the town purchased and installed carbon filtration systems for the wells—costing about $1 million—to keep the unregulated chemicals out of the water.
Mr. Conetta stressed that the district had “mostly complied” and pointed out that it had acknowledged mistakes that would not be repeated in the future.