SALEM, Indiana — Bob Fletcher is one of many Salem, Indiana residents who says he doesn't trust the city's tap water.
“Well that little swig I took earlier today, that’s the first sip of tap water I’ve taken in over a year.” Fletcher said.
WHAS11 first reported issues of brown, discolored water in Salem on Oct. 2. City officials said they were aware of the issues, and tests indicated the water was still safe for public consumption. They also said the issue would be "resolved promptly."
A spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) further said the issue was "an old 16-inch main from the plant with low flow was causing the discoloration issues due to sediment buildup."
IDEM said a flush hydrant was added to that main to increase the flow, and flushing would continue any time discolored water was detected.
When we spoke to Fletcher on Wednesday, he could still see a brown tint in his water. Many of his neighbors also felt the situation hadn't been fixed yet.
"It might be slowly hurting me and me just not know it. But a lot of people complain that their laundry comes out looking worse than it went in," Fletcher said, who said he tries to only use the water for essentials like showering and doing dishes.
While the city says the water is currently safe to drink, there's another thing that has Fletcher very worried. At the end of September, Salem Water Works sent a copy of it's 2022 Annual Drinking Water Report.
The city didn't explain why the 2022 report was sent out with just a few months left in 2023, but an IDEM spokesperson explained that many of the things on it were notifications to the public for past violations that Salem repeatedly failed to send out.
"When a water system fails to submit reports in a timely manner, a Monitoring & Reporting (M&R) Violation is issued and public notice required. In this case, Salem Water Works submitted their February 2022 turbidity results late. An M&R violation was issued. Salem was contacted several times to issue the public notice, but none was issued. Repeated failure to issue public notice (along with other issues) led to IDEM moving ahead with the enforcement process," IDEM spokesperson Barry Sneed said over email.
The 2022 report Fletcher and others were sent listed many violations, like admitting the city didn't perform all required tests for nine different types of water quality measures during various lengths of time between 2020 and 2022.
“The violations spanned all over all of last year. And I’m like, ‘Woah,'" Fletcher said. "Seems like they don't care."
What provided more context was a November 2022 Agreed Order between the city of Salem and IDEM compelling the city to fix these issues.
A list of the various violations in that legal order are:
Salem had too high of levels of trihalomethanes (TTHM) and haloacetic acids (HAA5) at one or more sampling sites in the fourth quarter of 2019, and all four quarters of 2020 and 2021. The city failed to notify residents of this for all of 2020 and 2021. Salem did provide public notice for the third quarter of 2021 in August 2022 before the order was agreed upon.
IDEM visited Salem Water Works on 3/24/22 and said "significant deficiencies" were found during a sanitary survey. On that same day IDEM told Salem it needed to rectify these issues within 45 days. On 5/9/22, Salem submitted a response to the sanitary survey. On 6/2/22 IDEM visited the facility again and found many of the same issues.
According to Sneed, Salem was on "reduced monitoring" for lead and copper and only needed to test for it during June - September every three years. Salem had to do this in 2020 but didn't report any samples, and then failed to do so again in 2021. Salem also failed to notify the public in both years.
IDEM put Salem on increased monitoring for lead and copper in 2022, and the city had to collect samples year-round. Salem submitted the last of those samples on 1/6/23 and Sneed says there were no issues.
However, Fletcher thinks testing for lead and copper once every three years is not enough.
"That wouldn't be enough, it should be an annual thing," Fletcher said. Sneed said every three years or "triennial" testing is accepted under federal guidelines.
Another violation mentioned in the report is that Salem had too high of turbidity levels in January - February 2022. Turbidity is a measure of how cloudy the water is. Salem also failed to notify customers about the excessive levels in January. FOCUS found a newspaper clipping from 6/1/23 notifying customers about the increased levels in February 2022, 16 months after the violation.
Salem was fined $7,762 for all of these violations, and Sneed says it has been paid. Sneed further said Salem is now current on all of its notifications to the public, even though many of them were sent out extremely late.
"There are no open violations for drinking water. Salem is routinely monitoring for regulated contaminants and the results are currently meeting SDWA (Safe Drinking Water Act) requirements," Sneed said.
Sneed said IDEM is going to Salem for a technical assistance visit at the end of October, and if that goes well, the state may close out the Agreed Order.
Fletcher was still upset and untrusting of the city since all of these failed tests and failures to notify the public were unknown to him until the last two weeks. He thinks the city has been keeping it secret for too long, and he wants Mayor Justin Green to resign or not seek reelection.
“City Hall’s keeping it secret. Town knows about it," he said. “If you want the position of mayor, you gotta do your job and earn your pay."
The city would not respond to any of FOCUS' questions specifically about the Agreed Order or the 2022 Annual Drinking Water Report, but Mayor Green provided this statement Wednesday over email:
"The safety and health of our residents are a top priority for the City of Salem. We work closely with IDEM and its engineers, and notifying about the issues that impact our city is also a priority. The City of Salem is here to address our resident’s questions and concerns," Green said.
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