By Hal Walter
When you buy a home in the mountains, there’s the notion you’re on top of the world, the food chain and even the watershed.
You drill a well into the ground and out pours clear, sparkling “Rocky Mountain Spring Water.” Snowmelt filtered through ancient stone. That sort of thing. There’s a certain irony when someone who analyzes the ingredients list on just about anything he eats doesn’t even question what might be in the water. But that’s what happened here.
Recently we decided that perhaps we should have a more complete analysis done on our well water. We’ve lived here for more than 19 years, and over this time my wife Mary developed hypothyroidism, and my son Harrison was diagnosed with autism. As for me, I’ve noticed some neurological issues that may not necessarily be connected with aging, like ADHD tendencies. We wondered if some of these issues could be originating about 150 feet underground.
So we decided to send water to the Colorado Department of Health lab for testing. The lab offers a “Deluxe Colorado Package” that checks for a number of standard pollutants including bacteria, chemicals, minerals, heavy metals and some radiological elements. Since there are some thorium mines in the area we added a separate test for thorium at additional cost. It should be noted that there is no aquifer here – wells are drilled into the bedrock and capture water from cracks and fissures that form underground springs and streams.
This test is pricey, and the water has to be collected in a careful manner, and delivered to Denver within 24 hours. And so even after receiving the bottles from the state we put off the testing for some while, meanwhile filtering our water through a countertop pitcher filter. Finally this summer we filled the bottles and shipped them away.
Over the years we’ve occasionally had the water checked for bacteria through the Pueblo health department. It’s simple to fill a bottle and take it there. Never have we had a positive test for any bacteria. We would not have even tested for bacteria if it hadn’t been included in the package.
So imagine my surprise when the very next day the phone rang and it was someone from the lab telling me my water contained e. coli and total coliform bacteria, and is considered unsafe for human consumption or even bathing. Do not allow it to contact open cuts – this is “very dangerous,” I was told.
The immediate advice was to “shock chlorinate” our well. This involved a fairly detailed procedure of pouring a specific measured amount of bleach down the well, and running the outside hose back down the well to disinfect the casing. Then I ran water into every faucet in the house to disinfect the pipes. We waited overnight, then ran all the water out of the well and onto the driveway until it no longer smelled like chlorine. I also took this opportunity to hose down the inside of the barn with this chlorine solution to disinfect for hantavirus. All the while I wondered if exposure to chlorine compounds might be a greater risk than the bacteria I was attempting to destroy.
A couple days later we took a sample to Pueblo and there was no bacteria present. That was all fine and dandy, but we decided to continue hauling water from treatment devices at two health-food stores we frequent while awaiting test results on the rest of the chemistry.
That was a good call. Because as the information trickled in we learned we have double the EPA allowable level of lead in our water, and over-the-limit levels of nitrate/nitrite as well. While the report on our well from the state health department warned against drinking and cooking with the water, and said that it poses a risk to crops such as celery and green beans, it also stated that it rated “Excellent for all classes of livestock and poultry.”
Yeah, right.
Also present were subtle hints of uranium and thorium, though both were well under levels considered safe.
Most troubling was the report on the lead. Ironically, one of the reasons we decided to move away from Leadville many years ago was heavy metal contamination. And while there is an old lead pit mine a few miles down the road from here, it never occurred to us that we’d have lead in our water, even after the EPA tested roads in the area a few years ago because they had been surfaced with tailings from the mine.
Hypothyroidism and autism both have been linked to lead toxicity. Also, ADHD and other cognitive dysfunction. This could possibly explain some things around here.
Then again, maybe not. While our assumption that we’ve been drinking pure Rocky Mountain spring water is definitely wrong, there’s no way to go back and pinpoint the cause of any problem on this environmental factor.
Likewise, we can’t simply undo 19 years of drinking this water.
This made me think about all the other folks in my neighborhood – there are perhaps 1,000 private wells in this county – who may be making the same mistake we did. In fact, thousands of people in heavily mineralized areas of Central Colorado are drinking untested well water. It’s up to the consumer, and very few people go through the process and expense of having their water tested.
My advice? Have the well thoroughly tested before you buy a property. If you’ve been drinking water from an untested well, test it now.
As for our situation, the only logical and feasible solution is to treat the water, a potentially expensive proposition. For now we’ve continued to haul drinking water from purification machines at health food stores. We’ve also just purchased a high-end gravity-fed purification device that should remove most of these toxic substances. Future plans call for an additional whole-house filter system.
Water is the human body’s most important nutrient. It often doesn’t come with an easily obtainable ingredient list. It’s up to you to get one.
For more information about testing your well water, contact the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, 303-692-3090.
Hal Walter writes and edits from the Wet Mountains.You can keep up with him regularly at his blog: www.hardscrabbletimes.com
