MILES CITY - Pallets of bottled water are being handed out at the Custer County Fire Hall in Miles City as the community is currently under a boil water advisory due to inadequate disinfection.
The city’s water issues date back several years.
“It’s very scary, it’s a scary situation,” said Miles City resident, Candace Newby on Wednesday.
A letter from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) says the city has violated clean water laws twice in the past two years and its water treatment plant failed to maintain microbial disinfection five separate times over the same time period.
“It’s been a recurring issue. Human error and some of it was related to equipment failure. I mean the end results the same,” said Miles City Public Utilities director, Tom Speelmon.
Speelmon said these issues are ones that take time to fix, and multiple factors contribute to the problem.
“We have a lot of really young operators, and we have a lot of really old operators. You know, it’s a training process. Our plant’s old, we have equipment issues that we’re also working through. The job requires a lot of attention to detail, especially in an older plant without automation,” Speelmon said.
Crews have been working around the clock to flush the distribution system, but some residents are still frustrated.
“It’s very hard. I live at the Eagles Manor,” Newby said.
Newby stopped by the Custer County Fire Hall to pick up bottled water provided by the city.
“It’s very hard because the whole building is basically boiling their water for everything and it’s very hard. Me and my boyfriend drink water nonstop,” said Newby.
But others, such as longtime Miles City resident Jeannine Price, say it could be worse.
“It don’t upset me. I think of the town of Hysham, look how long they’ve been out of water. I can’t complain,” Price said.
While the boil water order is in place for at least another week, Speelmon said they’re looking for solutions. In the meantime, some businesses, including the Miles City Brew, have closed up shop until the problems can be fixed.
“There are other aspects of our plant that we’re looking at modernizing as a redundancy so things like this do not continue to happen. They have to be engineered, paid for and installed. It’s not a quick process,” said Speelmon.
