A state report shows improvement in the number of public water supplies that reported contamination problems last year. Dennis Alt gathers the info for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
He says in the last five years the number of systems with drinking water violations has dropped from 198 to 153. Alt says the most common violations involve bacteria and nitrates.
Most of those violations though are in small water systems, such as campgrounds or bars, and do not occur in large municipal water systems very often. He says state is able to react quickly when the violations come up and the water systems are usually.
Alt says the state also works to cut back other contaminants in the water, but they’re not things that can cause immediate illness.
Alt says there were no water-borne diseases or deaths reported last year from the nearly two thousand public water supplies in Iowa.
Iowa's Radio News Network
