Indiana Ratepayers Tired Of Year-Long Brown Water Problem

Those who call Sellersburg, IN, home are tired of finding their only source of drinking water brown and floating with particles.

An advisory had been issued for the town of Sellersburg earlier this month, according to walb.com, instructing residents to boil their water for five to 10 minutes before use and to take caution while doing laundry.

While the area has suffered recent water main breaks, the water has been reported as being in deplorable condition for over a year.

Sellersburg Water Superintendent Clark Henson said that a water plant was replaced in December, per wdrb.com, but that it soon began malfunctioning.

“It was letting the iron and manganese particles ... it was taking out a bunch of it, but it was letting a bunch of it go back into the system,” Henson said.

Henson added that despite this, the water was still safe to drink. WDRB interviewed Beth Key, a Sellersburg Water customer whose faucet at her home ran nothing but discolored water.

“It can't possibly be healthy to drink brown water," Key said. "It just can't."

Key moved into her home a year ago and has struggled with the water ever since, according to WDRB. She added that the water is not brown every day but is dirty more often than not.

Key also told WDRB that her shower water hardens to sludge.

“I had never seen brown water before … third world countries, but not in the United States, not in Indiana,” she said.

WDRB used a testing kit and found normal lead, pesticide, nitrate, and other harmful chemicals in Key’s drinking water. The pH level was found to be between 8.5 and 10, higher than the EPA standard of 6.5 to 8.5.

“We all had a headache, stomach upset and just feeling lethargic,” Key said.

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Drinking Water Contaminant Removal Solutions Center.