[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish water system had history of violations before amoeba

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish water system had history of violations before amoeba
Print Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Benjamin
Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune 
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on September 27, 2013 at 8:00 PM, updated September 27, 2013 at 8:28 PM


State officials have uncovered several drinking water act violations in St.
Bernard Parish's water system since Hurricane Katrina, ranging from failure
to properly monitor the water to finding bacteria in state tests, documents
show.

Records of the violations, issued from 2006 to 2012, reveal the state was
concerned that St. Bernard water employees were not properly supervised and
that the parish, at times, could "not be sure" about the quality of the
water it delivered to residents.

On at least one occasion, the state even had to recommend that the parish
stop allowing waterworks employees to watch television during working hours.

"The above listed violations and issues are all easily avoided provided the
staff is properly trained and attentive to the necessary equipment, which
the television may be interfering with," a state engineer wrote in an
October 2011 letter.

A hydrant is flushed at the corner of Esteban and Mustang Dr. in Arabi.
After the deadly brain-eating amoeba was found in the system, St. Bernard
Parish has been "Âœburning and flushing" its water system -- upping the
amount of water and the amount of pure chlorine -- in an attempt to get
chlorine residual levels to 1 milligrams per liter (mg/L) throughout the
system. Levels of 0.5 mg/L of chlorine or above supposedly will prevent the
amoeba from infecting humans.
Photo by Ted Jackson, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune
 
State and local officials this week said none of those previous violations
are directly related to the deadly brain-eating amoeba recently found in the
parish water supply or the low chlorine levels that likely contributed to
the amoeba's presence. The amoeba is blamed for the death of a boy in
August, after he played on a Slip 'n Slide in the Violet area.

But the parish now has become the first municipal water system in the
country ever to test positive for the presence of the deadly amoeba. In
documents related to the violations in previous years, state officials
described parish water plant employees as unfocused, and listed problems
that extended past the immediate post-Katrina struggles to properly
circulate and chlorinate the water.

Still, officials said the problems in St. Bernard - previous to the amoeba's
presence this month - were not unusual compared to the rest of the state.

"A lot of these findings in these reports in St. Bernard would be found in
reports in other systems. Most are routine problems that water systems have
to address on a regular basis - not related to chlorination issues and the
amoeba," said J.T. Lane, director of DHH's Office of Public Health, which
oversees the state's drinking water.

For example, Lane said a quarter of the water systems -- about 340 -- in the
state had received similar coliform violations since 2008.

"That is the reason we were not surprised by those violations," Lane said of
St. Bernard's violations.

A 2012 rise in bacteria

The problems Lane alluded to referred to a 2012 excess in the maximum amount
of allowable coliform in St. Bernard's water system.

While coliforms are bacteria that are naturally present in the environment,
they are an indicator that other, potentially-harmful bacteria might be
present. And so because coliforms were found in more samples than allowed in
St. Bernard in 2012, that was a warning of potential problems.

Coliforms present often indicate that there could be a problem with the
water treatment or distribution system, in other words the pipes, DHH
district water supervisor Yoland Mott-Brumfield wrote in an April 3, 2012,
letter to Jacob Groby, the parish's superintendent of water quality control.

Still, Mott-Brumfield noted that, in follow-up testing, no bacteria of
greater concern were found in the water system. That testing was for
bacteria such as fecal coliform and E. Coli.

Last year's testing, however, did not search for the deadly brain-eating
amoeba. This past summer, the Naegleria fowleri amoeba infected a 4-year-old
Mississippi boy while he was visiting St. Bernard. Soon thereafter, DHH
officials began testing the water specifically for that amoeba. On Sept. 12,
the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the amoeba
was found in four sites in St. Bernard.

The amoeba normally is found in the sediment of warm-water lakes and rivers.
Until now, it had not been found in water systems in the nation, in part
because water systems in the U.S. routinely maintain chlorine levels above
0.5 milligrams per liter, enough to kill the amoeba.

Recent tests by DHH found no chlorine at all at the St. Bernard sites where
the amoeba was found. The tests also found no chlorine levels at other sites
throughout the parish.

The amoeba cannot be contracted by drinking contaminated water. It only
infects people by going deep up their nose and then traveling up the
olfactory nerve into the brain. Once in the brain it often consumes brain
cells and tissue, in part because it is attracted to its high-oxygen
content, according Dr. Jennifer Cope, a CDC epidemiologist.

Monitoring and attention lapses

Apart from bacteria issues, problematic filtering and lax monitoring of the
parish water had been observed back in October 2011. That was four months
after a 28-year-old St. Bernard man died from the infection from the deadly
amoeba - the first time Louisiana ever had reported a death from that
amoeba.

In an Oct. 3, 2011, letter to St. Bernard Director of Public Works Hillary
Nunez, DHH district engineer Clyde Carlson described how St. Bernard was not
properly monitoring and testing its water and therefore was in violation of
state and federal regulations.

Carlson noted that St. Bernard was not properly calibrating its
turbidimeters and "therefore cannot be sure of the quality of the drinking
water during that time."

While turbidity does not have health effects in and of itself, it can
interfere with disinfection and provide a medium for microbial growth,
according to the DHH.

"Turbidity may indicated the presence of disease-causing organisms," Carlson
wrote. "These organisms include bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can
cause symptoms such as nausea, cramps, diarrhea and associated headaches."

Those meters essentially measure the water's clarity, in other words, how
many soil particles, algae, plankton or microbes might be suspended in the
water. Also, higher turbidity (the less clear the water is) can increase
water temperature "because suspended particles absorb more heat," according
to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency literature.

Carlson explained to Nunez that all of the above might have been avoided if
water plant employees had paid a little more attention at work.

"Watching T.V. has nothing to do with the quality of water leaving the
facility." - Steve Lombardo, parish plant manger
"St. Bernard Parish Waterworks should reconsider what appears to be a policy
of allowing operators to watch television while on duty," Carlson wrote to
Nunez on Oct. 3, 2011.

Carlson concluded his letter by stating that the turbidity violations must
be corrected to avoid possible Office of Public Health enforcement action.

Steve Lombardo, who oversees the parish water plant's operations, said on
Friday that there no longer is a television in the water plant, although at
times employees will watch weather reports and other news on computer
monitors that is relevant to their work.

"Watching T.V. has nothing to do with the quality of water leaving the
facility," Lombardo said. "Anybody can walk around a facility and nitpick
and find something.

"We take our job serious because we could go to jail for this. ...I live
here, my grandchildren live here and so do all my operators. We are here to
make the best water quality possible."

DHH said Friday that it was not aware of any change in the plant's "T.V.
policy, though it has been off during DHH's (recent) visits to the
facility."

Groby said that the public was never at risk due the turbidity issue because
he said that the specific turbidimeters that DHH was referring to "were
simply a redundancy" and so if the water had been contaminated other
turbidimeters down the line would have caught the problem.

Katrina water problems noted

The DHH records also showed that state officials noted a laundry list of
deficiencies and concerns in the St. Bernard water system in the few years
after Hurricane Katrina.

In 2008, Williams noted that staffing levels at the St. Bernard water plant
were inadequate and that there was not enough on-site support staff. He
noted that a single individual was operating the plant for two out of the
three plant shifts.

"This level of staffing is unacceptable for a facility of this size,"
Williams wrote in April 2008 to Linda Daly, who was then the parish director
of public works.

The letter urged the parish to "be proactive in aggressively attracting and
retaining qualified employees."

The state then also noted concerns with water disinfection and a lack of
continuous monitoring to ensure safe water quality and levels.

For example, Williams' letter noted that the turnover of the water in the
parish system might have been inadequate "resulting in stale or poor quality
water being introduced into the distribution system."

The letter noted that while St. Bernard was performing flushing of its water
distribution system "as a corrective measure in response to customer
complaints," it was not performing them as part of a formalized, written
program. DHH asked St. Bernard in 2008 to "implement a routine flushing
program."

The parish also had post-Katrina problems with water circulation and
chlorination, as a much smaller population and lower water consumption meant
water sat on pipes longer than before the storm.

"There is the potential for certain areas of the distribution system to
experience significantly 'older' water than experienced pre-Katrina,"
Williams wrote. He said if old water sits in the pipes for long periods,
chlorine levels would decrease and that in turn "will promote microorganism
growth."

Parish changes since violations

St. Bernard never did develop a formalized written plan for its flushing
program, as requested by DHH, but it did install 50 flushing stations in
2011. Groby said that he and other began attempting to get those flushing
stations in 2009 but that it took 17 months to finally get them approved by
FEMA and put in place.

At the time, then-parish President Craig Taffaro said the flushers were
"another example of St. Bernard leading the way in recovery and growth
activities."

Williams, the DHH engineer, also thanked Groby "for spearheading this and
for doggedly pursuing this."

"The flusher station should go a long way to improving the water quality,"
Williams said at that time.

While the parish started with 50 flushers, it know has 45. The rest were hit
by cars and broken, Groby said.

"The big picture is this: the people in the public don't know all that we
have done to help the water system," Groby said Friday. "We knew we would
have a problem with people not coming back after Katrina and we were
proactive and put in this flushing system."

In terms of staffing concerns at the plant, Gorby said the Water and Sewer
Department still just has one third of the staff that it had before Katrina.

"People moved away. They didn't want to come back," Groby said.

Both he and Lombardo confirmed that there's typically only one employee
operating the plant for the evening shifts. They both said it is hard
finding certified job applicants willing to stick with the hard work and,
often, at least at the beginning, low pay.

Lombardo said that's "the nature of the beast here in St. Bernard Parish.
...You got two refineries that will scoop up people that you train and get
certified."

Parish President Dave Peralta said that while "I always want more staffing,
I need more funding."

He added: "I would need more of a tax base to get the funding to pay for
more staff."

St. Bernard Parish government has set up a hotline -- 504.278.4251 -- to
provide a complete list of all CDC and DHH recommendations to safeguard
against catching the infection.

For more information on preventative measures, visit the CDC website at
http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/prevention.html. Safety tips also can
be found at http://www.dhh.la.gov/index.cfm/page/1696 or the public can
email the DHH questions at DHHInfo at la.gov

Copies of violations can be found here:
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