Residents express concern over Gore drinking water

A couple of Gore residents have expressed concerns about the drinking water quality after Gore Public Works Authority issued notices on Feb. 7 to GPWA customers notifying residents turbidity (cloudiness) levels in the water during some months in 2022 had exceeded the set standard amount.

The notice reads “The levels were “incorrectly” recorded according to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), due to “failure” of a machine recording those levels and residents were informed if they had health issues they thought may be relative to the high levels of turbidity to seek medical attention.

According to the notice, “GPWA had received a notice on Jan. 6 from the DEQ that for some months in 2022, a percentage of turbidity levels over 0.3 units at our water plant exceeded the set standard. Also, in some of these same months, a percentage of turbidity levels exceeded the turbidity maximum of 1 NTU. Within 30 days GPWA notified our customers as required by DEQ.”

According to information provided in the notice, “Turbidity is a measurement of how cloudy or murky water is. Turbidity itself is not a cause for concern,” the notice states. “During the period of high turbidity our bacterial testing results were always within the normal range.”

“The laboratory analysis has not shown violations of any drinking water contaminants. They had no violations with the exception of turbidity,” said Shellie Chard, Water Quality Division Director for DEQ and shared a link to Coliform Microbial Sample Results (state.ok.us).

“This is not an emergency situation. Our customers are notified within 24 hours should an emergency arise. Currently there is no action that our customers need to take at this time. They do not need to boil water or take any corrective action,” the notice reads.

Darrell Haney, a resident of Gore, recently informed a Tulsa news reporter, last year his health was worse than usual. Haney, who could not be reached for comment, said he vomits twice a day and sometimes three.

“I got 29 percent in my lungs. That’s all I can breathe and I got bad heart problems. I’ve had a heart attack the last year,” Haney said.

Haney said when he received the report about drinking water violations for several months last year, he was concerned.

The notice indicated “If you have a severely compromised immune system, have an infant, are pregnant, or are elderly, you may be at increased risk and should seek advice from your healthcare provider about drinking the water.”

“If when they first found those high levels, if they had notified the people that this was going on, then the ones that are susceptible to being sicker, they could have done different things,” Haney said.

“They could have drank the bottled water, or boiled the water,” another resident, Laverne Young, said.

Although the mayor of Gore did not return calls to Your TIMES, Chard said “Turbidity is a fancy word for cloudiness which the city attributed to extreme rainfall in Lake Tenkiller, and they inspected and cleaned the filters at our facility multiple times a day and monitored chlorine levels and adjusted them as needed and that bacterial testing results were always within normal range.”

At that time, Haney and Young reported the water resembled “watereddown” milk.

The notice states to the customers “The high turbidity levels recorded in February 2022 were levels that were incorrectly recorded (artificially high) due to the failure of the machine recording those levels. The machine was repaired and subsequently inspected by Chris Gremillion (DEQ Local Services Division) in March 2022.

“To offset the higher turbidity levels during that time, we inspected and cleaned the filters at our facility multiple times a day. We also monitored chlorine levels and adjusted them as needed. Currently our water is back to normal.”

The notice advised customers to call Town Mayor Bob Warren for any information.

Your TIMES will include any additional information or comments concerning the issue if or when it becomes available.