Water Woes

We live in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa.  It is actually (according to something I heard) the fourth largest city (population) in Oklahoma.  One would think with that distinction we would have state-of-the-art public service, but alas, that is not the case.  One might think we would at least have similar to our close neighbor, Tulsa, but even there the services seem to be much more advanced.

We frequently have had electrical brown-outs, and if the power is likely to go off anywhere in the metro area, it will be here.  We also frequently get notices in our water bills about water quality.  The city is in the process of building a new water treatment facility scheduled to open in 2014, but meanwhile...

There was a main water line break between here and Pryor a couple of days ago which lowered the pressure from the water source to the city to the extent that demand was higher than supply, so the city did what they could to make sure the water supply was "safe" and the tanks would refill before the demand overtook the supply completely.

They issued a voluntary boil alert--customers were asked to boil water for one minute before cooking, drinking, brushing teeth, and bathing children.  They also closed down all the restaurants in the area until the boil alert was lifted. In addition, they were to fine anyone caught watering outside $500.00.  But the worst (to me) was that they added a LOT more chlorine to the water system.

This morning they lifted the outdoor water ban as well as the boil alert when they got back the test results stating there were no contaminants in the supply, so supposedly things are back to "normal" in that regard.  Meanwhile I hate to do laundry with all that extra chlorine in the water, and I have to wonder how it will affect my plants.

With all the additional chemicals being put into the water, I called the Culligan people to see if they could come and change out our filters on our leased RO water filter, and the woman gave me grief about it being less than a year since they last did it (11 months instead of 12) but I am always one to err on the side of caution when it comes to filters--air and water. Since we went through the same issue last year when I wanted them to change out the filters early, Ornery wants to just cancel our contract with them and buy a unit to service ourselves.  NOT from Culligan, as they are really expensive. Customer service is also not really their strong suit.

Okay, rant over. I need to move to Utopia. :)