Have a glass of water — or two or three — Oak Parkers, because the village’s annual water report was recently released and your water has received a good clean thumbs-up.
Each year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires communities to prepare a Consumer Confidence Report, providing information on the quality of the local drinking water, according to the village’s senior pumping station operator, Fred Biring. In addition to detailed analyses of substances in the water, the report also includes facts about the community’s drinking water delivery system and source.
“We check the bacteriological integrity of the water on a monthly basis to make sure it’s safe to drink,” said Biring. “Sixty samples from throughout the village are collected from different sources, 15 per week.”
The water is also tested once every three years for lead and copper, both of which can cause a myriad of health issues in children and adults. The next testing cycle is in 2018, Biring said.
Oak Park began receiving drinking water from Lake Michigan via the city of Chicago in 1912, as Chicago had started adding chlorine to the water to make it safe, Biring said.
“They didn’t treat the water,” said Biring. “They pretty much pumped it out and delivered it. But that’s why the water main was brought to that location.”
Prior to 1912, there was a private water system in Oak Park and surrounding communities, said Biring. The Scoville family had private artesian wells and Mr. Scoville, an Oak Park real estate developer, operated a private water supply on North Boulevard between Oak Park Avenue and Euclid in the mid 1800s, until in 1908 plans were being discussed to lay new water main and buy water from Chicago, said Biring.
The average daily pumpage back then was about 400,000 gallons per day for the village’s 20,000 residents, according to information provided on the Oak Park website. Today, an average of about 5 million gallons of water per day are pumped into the village, Biring said.
The water arrives pretreated via pipelines from Chicago’s Jardine Water Purification Plant. Water is then stored in four underground reservoirs — the largest being the 5 million-gallon reservoir at the circa-1920 building at Lombard Avenue and Lake Street — and re-pumped from there, said Biring. The water is kept in constant motion in the reservoir to keep it fresh, and that way, only a small amount of chlorine needs adding before it is pumped into Oak Park’s 105 miles of water mains.
Biring said anyone who wanted to personally have their water tested would be directed by the village to a state-certified drinking water lab and provided with a list of certified labs in this area. But Biring said his intention is to make sure Oak Park residents sleep well at night knowing their water is safe.
“That would be my goal,” he said. “I think we achieved it.”
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Check out the annual water report at www.oak-park.us/waterqualityreport.
Felicia Dechter is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.