Residents of the San Tan Valley had to confront a challenging scenario. The utility company from East Valley scared the San Tan Valley residents with a very serious, but confusing, E. coli warning. Samples of water tested positive for E. coli bacteria and total Coliform bacteria.
It’s one of today’s worst health concerns: contaminated water. Thousands in the San Tan Valley were surprised to find out that the utility company in the East Valley tested the water and found it was contaminated. Johnson Utilities announced the population of the San Tan Valley just this Tuesday. Now residents are worried there might already be an E. coli outbreak threatening their health.
The notice states that signs of E. coli were found in the water supply. Johnson Utilities advised residents to take E. coli precautions by boiling their water. The company first issued the E. coli threat to local schools Tuesday, but most people found out about the E. coli concerns Wednesday.
The PR firm of the utility company said: “We first became aware of a potential problem on August 18 when our routine sampling revealed some positive results for E. coli that we believed to be false since they contradicted the results of our previous regular sampling”.
However, all the E. coli concerns seem to be unfounded. A new statement from Johnson Utilities suggests that the San Tan Valley E. coli warning was false. San Tan residents shouldn’t worry about possible E. coli infections. On August 19th, the utility company collected a second set of water samples.
“It says from those test results that there’s no E. coli in the water, as of Sunday morning”, said Greg Brown, Vice President of Operations at Johnson Utilities for CBS. About the first set of results, Brown also stated: “We believe there never was any contamination. Rather the false positives that were detected likely resulted from sampling errors or cross contamination by the laboratory.”
Johnson Utilities officials assure San Tan locals that all the confusions about the possible E. coli outbreak were due to a delay. The first and second E. coli test results took 3 days of laboratory research. By the time the first test results arrived to Johnson Utilities, the second testing had already begun.
This is a total joke. ADEQ states there was no error. Dozens of tests were done and samples throughout a 10 mi radius tested positive. Where is the real reporting on this?
Who is going to pay for all of the businesses’ lost revenue? How many people were at the docs office because they were sick?