By FINN HARTNETT

Staff writer

Last week, Record columnist Pat Wick was host for her grandson at her home in Ramona.

“All of a sudden, he came out of the bathroom and he said, ‘Baba, there’s something weird with the water,’” Wick said. “I looked, and it was the color of coffee.”

Brown water in Rural Water District No. 1, which covers Tampa and Ramona, is nothing new.

“It’s gotten to be sort of a normal thing,” Wick said. “When I go to wash clothes, I check the water first. I fill the tub before I know what color clothes I can put in.”

The water system itself is around 60 years old, according to Tampa resident and former water board member David Mueller. Some of the water lines are only slightly newer.

“I was married 50 years ago, and they put the lines in not long before that,” Tampa resident Virginia Bentz said.

The district’s water comes from a well northwest of Lehigh.

“It’s a small finger of the Ogallala aquifer,” Mueller said.

Lehigh, part of a different district, and Durham, which operates its own system and was ranked as having the second-best tasting water in the state last year, run wells in the same area.

RWD No. 1’s old water lines break fairly often, which allows dirt and sediment to build up in the system.

After a break, water dark with iron and manganese must be flushed out by water operators.

This water is meant to emerge from “flush hydrants” scattered around the district, but depending on the location and size of the break, dirty water often emerges from personal taps.

Wick estimated that her water had turned brown 20 times so far this year.

“It does seem to be a growing problem,” she said.

Usually, the water clears up within a day.

But recently, two large breaks in RWD No. 1’s main caused some customers to go without clean water for as many as 10 days.

Ramona and Tampa are farther away from the well field than Lehigh and Durham; their main stretches 12 miles from pumps to tower.

Hundreds of miles of pipe branch off to each residence.

“It’s at least a half-mile of line per customer,” Mueller said. “It’s completely unlike a city.”

After breaks 10 days ago, the district gave out free bottles of water at the Ramona post office and Tampa library.

The district stated June 30 that it was flushing lines.

But over the next week residents still were reporting dark brown water.

“This is the worst I’ve seen it,” Wick said Friday. “I’ve never seen water come out of the faucet that was coffee-colored, and I’m talking coffee with no cream.”

After taking a cup of water and letting it settle in a pint jar, she reported a quarter-inch of sediment.

Residents shared pictures of their own dark-brown water.

Some complained that their water filters had broken because of heavy sediment.

RWD No. 1 is operated by a board of local volunteers.

Ramona resident Nathan Brunner said communication from the board had historically been an issue.

“Two years ago, we had no communication when there was a break,” he said. “We had to call in and ask. In the last six to eight months, they’ve gotten a lot better.”

An email list created by water operator Autumn Chisholm is used to inform residents about flushing and line breaks. More than 100 addresses are on the list.

But some residents, particularly the elderly or those who are new to town, still are out of the loop, Brunner said.

Chisholm said she had worked hard to keep residents in the know.

“I have asked for emails a number of times in years past,” she said. “Some give; some don’t.”

A third-party notification service like Everbridge could be used to inform residents via cell phone, but this would cost money the district doesn’t seem to possess.

As is, mixed messages have been sent to the list.

On July 3, Chisholm wrote that the dirty water was “a mixture of iron and manganese and not harmful, but ugly.”

Two days later, Chisholm sent another email, which included a passage from Kansas Department of Health and Environment recommending that those with manganese discoloration in their water find an alternative source for drinking.

As of Tuesday, the water was back to normal in Ramona and Tampa.

“Right now, they have clear water,” Chisholm said.

Wick confirmed that her water had cleared up.

But the dam has broken for certain residents continuing to apply pressure to RWD No. 1.

Brunner and Tampa resident Kristina Kraemer both spoke at the county commissioners’ meeting on Monday and have reached out to different state agencies to see if they can help improve the district.

“We’ll work with Kansas Department of Emergency Management, or we’ll work with somebody above the [county] commissioners,” Brunner said. “Eventually, something will happen.”