ALEXANDER BUCKNAM
Staff Writer
Many students remember having to boil their water during the semester.
Fredonia has been having boil water alerts due to an old water treatment system, according to Fredonia’s mayor, Michael Ferguson.
“We have had seven since 2020,” Sarah Laurie, the director of environmental health and safety and sustainability at SUNY Fredonia, said.
According to Ferguson, most water treatment systems need to be upgraded every 25 years, while Fredonia’s system is 135 years old.
“Fredonia water alerts happen so often because we have a deteriorating system, and multiple system failures,” Ferguson said.
According to Laurie, there could be several reasons why Fredonia keeps having boil water alerts.
“Fredonia water treatment is at its max capacity. It’s a manual process,” said Laurie.
According to Laurie, if there’s not an employee at the plant to make certain changes at the right time, a component can fail and it won’t complete its part of the process; that’s when the water is determined not safe to drink. “Many other plants have multiple parallel lines, so if one line goes down, water can be treated through the other one. Fredonia doesn’t have that, we have one line,” Laurie stated.
This past boil water alert that the village had on April 17 of this year and lasting until April 21, 2024 was due to high levels of turbidity when cleaning out the clear tank, according to Ferguson.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, turbidity is “the clarity of water and it is an important factor in water quality.”
Cleaning out the clear tank can cause silt to go everywhere, which can cause extremely cloudy water, which would then lead to a boil water alert, Ferguson said.
Photo by Drew Paluch | Photo Editor
According to the mayor, there is a certain amount of silt that sits on the bottom of the clear tank and they have to go in to vacuum it up. This could cause the silt to go everywhere and that silt could contain some toxins.
During this process, they have to keep an eye on the levels of turbidity because a boil water alert occurs when turbidity levels get too high.
Another reason for the boil water alerts is the source of the water.
Ferguson stated, “We plan to fix this by getting our water from Lake Erie.”
Fredonia will be switching over to the treatment center that the City of Dunkirk uses, where they have much better equipment to do high-power things, according to Ferguson. He also said that Fredonia plans to fix their water lines.
This process could take a few years if we switch to Dunkirk. According to Ferguson, “We would need to get a permit to go through or under the interstate thruway [Interstate 90].”
It could also be extremely pricey, costing anywhere from $20-30 million.
“This could take up to three years before we even get a shovel in the ground,” stated Ferguson.
In total, there have been seven boil water notices in the Village of Fredonia since 2020, according to Laurie.
“We try our best to communicate with Fredonia State University when a boil water alert is happening,” Ferguson said.
The school communicates with students by sending them an email.
Getting these emails before paying your deposit to go to Fredonia could play some discussion on where a person attends a school, Laurie explained. However, she believes, “they don’t happen frequently or within that time where it would make such an impact.”