By STEVEN GOODE
Courant Staff Writer
HARTFORD, Conn., Oct. 11, 2000 (The Hartford Courant)—When Vicki Carey needs some water to rinse her toothbrush or take a pill, she heads for the faucet, if only for a second.
Old habits are hard to break, but Carey and a growing number of neighbors on Duncaster Road in Bloomfield are doing just that, using bottled and boiled water in place of water from their taps. Carey likens a visit to her year-old home to a trip to Mexico.
"Don't drink the water," she said.
Since July, the West Hartford/Bloomfield Health District has screened wells at about 120 homes on Duncaster Road, and determined that coliform or E. coli bacteria have contaminated 60 of them.
"These are unexplained levels," said Steve Huleatt, district health director. "There shouldn't be any there."
Huleatt said the district began testing wells at several Duncaster Road homes last summer at the request of residents who had contamination in the past. When those tests showed the presence of bacteria, they widened their efforts to neighboring homes.
"We still figured it was something simple, then one thing led to another," said Huleatt, whose organization found contaminated wells from the beginning to the end of the approximately 4-mile-long road.
As perplexing to Huleatt as the scope of the contamination is the district's inability to determine its cause or origin. A number of theories ranging from contamination from a former farm to a drought- like summer that lowered water levels in wells in 1999, followed by an extremely wet one this year have been considered.
The area is made up of layers of ledge that allow water to run faster and more unpredictably than areas with hard-packed soil, and bacteria has been found in wells as little as a year old, but not in wells several decades old. These factors add to the difficulty of determining the origin of the contamination.
"We have to find some commonality," Huleatt said. "I'd love to be able to help those homeowners understand what's happening."
Huleatt said the onset of colder weather might slow or cause the contamination to subside, but his department will continue to seek answers through more sophisticated testing and a process of elimination.
"If we can't figure out how it started, we can't figure out how to stop it if it happens again," said Huleatt, adding that none of the Duncaster Road residents have complained of illness, and the rest of Bloomfield's drinking water is clean and safe to drink.
In response to the residents' situation, the Metropolitan District Commission, which supplies drinking water to much of Bloomfield, installed a tap at the Tunxis Road firehouse. The commission also met Tuesday to recommend the construction of a Class 1 water main on Duncaster Road, which would enable residents to tap into it on an as- needed basis. The MDC would also pay for the installation of the line at a cost of about $3 million. Residents must pay to hook up to the line, and would also be required to pay $41 per linear foot in frontage fees. Residents can make a one-time payment to the commission, or spread it out over 15 years at an interest rate of 6 percent. There are also quarterly fees for water, which average about $140 per year for a family of four. The installation project is expected to take about a year to complete.
"This is a major health issue," said Bloomfield MDC Commissioner Al Reichin . "If we could drop it in the ground tomorrow, we would. It's a monster job, but we'll get it done."
Carey said she appreciates the efforts of the MDC and health district. Until Tuesday's action by the commission, the Avon schoolteacher's only complaint had been about the lack of communication from the organizations making decisions that will affect her and her neighbors.
And even though she'll be boiling and filtering water for washing vegetables and giving her two cats bottled water for at least the next year, she has no intention of leaving the house built by her husband, Donald.
"This is still our dream house," she said. "It's just the water I don't like."
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