DNR: GORDONVILLE WATER IS STILL SAFE

Customers of Gordonville's water system were exposed to low levels of contaminants, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources revealed in a published announcement, but DNR experts say they shouldn't worry.

The legal notice that appeared in the Southeast Missourian newspaper this week about Gordonville water was a formality and not a notice of a serious health threat, a DNR spokesman said.

The notice stems from a routine sample of well water drawn on January 24 which contained more than the accepted level of nonacute coliform bacteria. No orders for additonal purification measures have been issued because such bacteria exist naturally in the earth and vegetation, explained Jack Baker, water quality section chief for the MDNR Poplar Bluff offices.

There would be more scrutiny of the Gordonville water if the sample had revealed the acute variant of coliform, which comes from feces, he said.

"On these regular coliform, they are required to tell people this happened. It's a federal law. ... For regular coliform, we don't consider it to be an immediate health threat," he said. "If there's fecal coliform, a boil order will be issued."

Hundreds of precautionary boil orders are issued in this region every year, said Baker. With water quality, it always pays to err on the side of caution, he said, so local water districts and the DNR will issue precautionary boil orders for any risk -- even a water pressure drop due to routine pipe or pump maintenance.

Currently, water districts in Marble Hill, Mo. and Clarkton, Mo. (near the Arkansas border) are under precautionary boil orders.