The city of Columbus is planning to drill two new wells in the south wellfield to add more water capacity for customers.
The $1 million project is being considered by the Columbus Utility Service Board at its regular meeting at 11:30 a.m. today at the utility offices, 1111 McClure Road.
Scott Dompke, Columbus City Utilities executive director, said the department is proposing to drill two new wells near State Road 11.
Columbus’ public drinking water comes from groundwater accessed via 22 wells and two filtration plants, according to Columbus City Utilities’ 2019 annual water quality report.
Since October 2017, the city’s No. 14 and No. 15 wells, which are east of the proposed new drilling site, have been out of service after testing revealed low amounts of 1,4-dioxane in the water there. The organic chemical is used as an industrial solvent that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers to be “a likely human carcinogen.”
Columbus is one of several Indiana cities that tested above the .35 parts per billion Environmental Protection Agency recommended limit for the industrial solvent, testing at .48 parts per billion in the city water system in 2013.
The two wells that are out of service are located east of State Road 11 and south of Garden City, near the East Fork White River.
In earlier interviews, city officials and investigators have emphasized there is no federal standard for 1,4-dioxane limits. Other Indiana cities testing above the EPA recommendations for 1,4-dioxane in 2013 were LaPorte and Evansville.
Officials from Intera, a geoscience and engineering solutions company with offices in Bloomington, completed a report on the status of the city’s south wellfield last year.
The company could not say where the chemical originated or how far north or south it may have spread, only that it has been detected at the bottom of the aquifer between the wells and the river. That means the company has determined the contamination appears to be to the east of the wells rather than the west, according to a presentation given by Rhett Moore, Intera’s principal hydrologist, to the utilities board last year.
In January, Columbus City Utilities awarded a $68,300 contract to Peerless Midwest Inc. to map the extent of chemical contamination in the aquifer that supplies Columbus’ drinking water and drill test wells and monitoring wells in the south well field near the two out-of-service wells.
Dompke said the test wells were drilled in preparation for drilling the two new wells. The two new wells, if approved by the utility board, would be drilled at the same location as the test wells.
“(The Peerless Midwest) project was for doing some testing to see if we the sites we chose (for the new wells) were OK, and it appears that they will be,” Dompke said.
Each of the two new wells are projected to produce about a million gallons of water per day for the city. The wells will be drilled to about 90-feet to 100-feet in depth, Dompke said.
If approved by the utility board, the utility department would bid the project out in early 2020 and hopes to have the wells in place by July or August of next year.
Existing funds already in place within the utility budget will be used to pay for the drilling, Dompke said.
The two wells that have been out of service will remain on that status as additional testing is done to determine the extent of 1,4-dioxane contamination and how the chemical is moving in groundwater, Dompke said.
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The organic chemical detected in wells Nos. 14 and 15, 1,4-dioxane, is used as a solvent in a wide range of products, including some lacquers, paints, varnishes, paint and varnish removers, cements, cosmetics, deodorants, among several other products, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an intergovernmental agency that conducts research on the causes of cancer.
International Agency for Research on Cancer is part of the United Nation’s World Health Organization.
Limited data exist about the health effects of 1,4-dioxane in humans, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry.
Though studies have not indicated whether 1,4-dioxane causes cancer in humans, several organizations — including the International Agency for Research on Cancer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — have determined that the chemical is a probable human carcinogen based on animal studies.
Rats, mice and guinea pigs that were administered water containing high amounts of 1,4-dioxane during a two-year period developed liver cancer, and rats also developed nose tumors.
There are no federal standard for 1,4-dioxane limits.
Visit www.epa.gov/fedfac/technical-fact-sheet-14-dioxane for more information.
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Visit columbusutilities.org/water-quality-report for more information or to download a copy of the annual Columbus City Utilities’ water quality report, which covers the 2018 calendar year.
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