Spring Lake Park, Minn.-(July 19,2018)- Every few months, the Minnesota Department of Health tests municipal water sources. A result that came back to Spring lake Park in June had reached the actionable level.
“Well, we ran into an issue where the Department of Health test the water quarterly and they determined that our radium 226/ 228 level was slightly above the state standard,” Spring Lake Park Administrator, Dan Buchholtz said.
Radium is naturally occurring, and is generally present at low levels in all soil, water, and rocks. But, at the water treatment plant on Arthur Street, the annual average levels of radium were higher that state standards.
“Since we found that out, we’ve been very busy doing a number of maintenance activates on our water treatment plant to try and bring that level down to below state standard.”
The city has cleaned out water holding tanks and backwater tanks, and changed when they put chemicals into the water. They have been working hard at the Arthur Street treatment plant to get things back to where they should be. But, this well is just one of the city’s water sources.
“We have four water treatment wells or ‘water wells’ and two water treatment plants and we mix water between the four,” Buchholtz said, “so if you look at the entire water system we’re still below the state standard, it’s just the one well that’s above.”
Long term exposure to high levels of radium is known to cause cancer. Spring Lake Park is working with the state to get new tests results as quickly as possible.
“It takes three months in order to get the results from the state,” Buchholtz said.”They came in June and did that so hopefully we’ll find out in September.”
Residents in Spring Lake Park did receive information about the elevated radium in their most-recent water bill, and the city will be updating residents with the new radium number once their test results are back.
