While the water is still unsafe to drink or ingest, authorities in Orange, Virginia, say it is okay for bathing, washing and flushing. Residents say their water has smelled like paint thinner, gasoline and diesel since last Wednesday.
Last Wednesday, Rapidan Service Authority’s (RSA) Wilderness Water Treatment Plant started hearing about a strange odor from their customers.
“The water treatment staff responded to those concerns and validated them, and also smelled them at the water treatment plant,” said Dwayne Roadcap, director for the Office of Drinking Water at the Virginia Department of Health.
Roadcap told WTOP that after the reports started coming in, state agencies, local authorities started looking for what might be causing the odor. Some water sampling also started.
Orange County confirmed that testing showed presence of hydrocarbons from an unknown source in RSA’s water system and from source water in the Rapidan River.
That led the Virginia Department of Health and the RSA to issue a “do not use” water advisory for the Lake of the Woods subdivision, Wilderness Shores, Somerset, Edgewood, Germanna Heights, Twin Lakes, Germanna Community College Locust Grove campus, and two shopping centers with several restaurants on Route 3.
On Saturday night, the advisory was changed to a “do not drink” water advisory, meaning residents are able to use the water supply for “bathing, toilet flushing, laundry, and other uses not
associated with consumption or ingestion.”
“That was based on a few things that have been happening over the last few days,” Roadcap said. “Lab sampling results have been coming in. We know the odor is no longer present at the water treatment plant intake, and the objectionable odor has been reducing over time.”
The 32-year veteran of Virginia’s health department told WTOP that the best case scenario is whatever caused the odor has bypassed the intake at the Rapidan River where the water treatment plant draws its water.
According to Roadcap, as the next order of business, “local leaders have been actively trying to move fresh water from the river to the system that has been treated.”
The cause of the odor is still not known.
“There was a significant effort to investigate up and down the river. No source was identified,” Roadcap said.
Roadcap, who has been the director of the Office of Drinking Water for six years, said hydrocarbon problems do happen.
“There are effective ways to treat that and remove it. In this particular case the water treatment plant did not have the types of technology in place to do the chemical feeds that would help remove that type of odor,” he said.
There have been conversations, according to Roadcap, with his office and the RSA about adding that treatment process to the system.
