U.S. Water News Online
WICHITA, Kan. -- The funny taste and bad odor that plague the city's drinking water here in spring and summer is caused by a chemical found in fertilizer, federal officials said.
The U.S. Geological Survey presented the findings of a $1.9 million six-year study to pinpoint the conditions that lead to runaway growth of algae in Cheney Reservoir, resulting in peculiar tasting and smelling water.
When the algae dies off, it gives off a chemical that makes the drinking water smell like the inside of a fish tank.
The culprit is phosphorus, a form of fertilizer that occurs naturally in rocks and is found in manure and farm fertilizer.
About 65 percent of the phosphorus getting into Cheney Reservoir, which provides about 60 percent of Wichita's drinking water, comes from agriculture, said Mike Pope of the Geological Survey.
Eliminating that phosphorus would eliminate the problems, he said.
Wichita became concerned about the quality of water in Cheney Reservoir during the summer of 1990. Throughout that summer, and again during the summer of 1991, the city received 300 to 500 calls a day from residents complaining about the way the water smelled and tasted, said Jerry Blain, project manager for the Wichita Water Department.
The city has been working with area farmers since the early 1990s to reduce the amount of fertilizer that gets into the reservoir. To date, the city has completed about 2,000 projects to reduce runoff.
Using information in the study, the city plans to make some changes, Blain said.
It will offer to relocate some dairy farms away from the streams that feed the reservoirs. It also plans to build buffer strips, grassy areas that catch fertilizer that would otherwise run off the fields.
The study, funded by the Geological Survey and the Bureau of Reclamation, analyzed more than 100 pollutants.
Excessive phosphorus was the only problem the study identified.
That will help the city, Blain said.
``We can focus on one piece, rather than a whole spectrum of things that we have to get out of the water,'' he said.
The study also found traces of pesticides in 99 percent of the samples taken from the reservoir, but the levels are low enough not to pose a health threat, Pope said.
The study also found that bacterial levels in the reservoir are low and the water is consistently clean enough for swimming and boating.
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