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tected locations.” That water is also treated before it reaches the town’s distribution lines.
The coloform bacteria, Mr. Shepherd said, represent a minor danger to those unused to its presence in their digestive systems. For people accustomed to the water, there would be no effect, but someone who drinks the water for the first time might find “a low-grade gastrointestinal effect. They may or may not have a reaction — it depends on their sensitivity and the amount of the exposure.”
He said it is not a danger comparable to the infamous “Montezuma’s Revenge” which sometimes afflicts tourists visiting Mexico and other countries where water supplies are not adequately protected. “That is a much more serious reaction,” the sanitarian said.
If the department had considered the presence of the bacteria to be an! immediate danger to public health, “if there were any known chemical or disease which might be spread,” the spring would have been closed immediately, Mr. Shepherd said.
As it is, he said, “we are in a delicate situation. We don’t want to condemn something which should not be — but we do not want to be a party to allowing a marginal health hazard to continue.”
Most of the 35 calls to his office, he said, have been from people who have drunk from the spring for years and are concerned that their health might be in danger. When the action is explained, he added, most feel that the health department has overreacted. “No one has agreed with the complaint.”
He said that further action is being discussed at the regional level within the department, “with input from the commissioner’s office.”
The department is trying to balance the benefit of removing a “marginal” health hazard,Ike said, against the possible results for people who use the spring regularly. “We know that a number of people use this as a primary source of water. We have to look at the results — will our action make things worse?”
In this case, he explained, closing the spring might drive those people to another place for water. “They could go to a surface source which is more grossly contaminated” than the spring.
Meanwhile, however, the person who made the original complaint still doesn’t feel that the posting of signs is strong enough action.
“I don’t think that we have satisfied anyone with this,” Mr. Shepherd said.
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