Fire district board members, joined by officials from the county and state health departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, will be on hand Tuesday at Sugarloaf Station 2, to brief concerned area residents on the current status of water well safety in the area.
The fire protection district installed well and septic systems in 2017 at its Station 1 and Station 2 in 2017, and on April 1, sampled the water in the well at Station 1 for PFCs.
John Winchester, a volunteer firefighter for the district, wrote in an email that at Station 1 the level of PFOA there was 79 parts per trillion, and the level of PFOS was 950 parts per trillion, and combining the two yields a level 14.7 times the EPA health advisory.
Winchester wrote the Station 2 well water has been tested once, on May 10, and that the levels exceeded the EPA standards, although not as significantly as at Station 1.
"We were notified by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on the 22nd of May, that the (Sugarloaf) fire department had tested their well water and that their well had high levels of PFC’s," said Chana Goussetis, spokeswoman for the Boulder County Public Health.
"And fortunately, we got those tests back earlier this week and only one of the wells had levels above the level of the EPA advisory, so that’s great news," Goussetis said.
Wasinger is waiting with interest to hear about testing results from the second sampling at Station 1, and for now his own well has not been tested.
"We are in great debt to our local firefighters and many of us wouldn’t even have houses standing, without them," said Wasinger, whose home was "right in the middle" of the Black Tiger Fire in 1989 and about three-quarters of a mile from the boundary of the devastating Fourmile Fire of 2010.
Source of contaminants under investigation Richardson said several state health and environment department staffers will be present at Tuesday night’s board meeting of the Sugarloaf district, to speak about the next steps in addressing the situation.
Goussetis said its initial recommendation to people in the Sugarloaf area followed the state health department guidelines, that women who were pregnant or planning to be, breast feeding or had bottle-fed infants, not use their well water, and utilize alternative sources of water for anything that absorbs water, such as soup, rice or beans.