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Water question
springs eternal
By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Health and highway officials continue to wrangle over the future of the popular roadside spring on U.S. 211 west of Sperry ville, with the final decision apparently resting with the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The spring’s outlet box, constructed during the building of Skyline Drive, is actually the issue, according to regional health director Dr. Malcolm Tenney. The trio of fountains which gurgle from the stone spring box are “attractive,” Dr. Tinney said, and mask the fact that “they are actually a detriment to public health.”
He said that he told Robert Moore, the Virginia Department of Transportation’s resident engineer for Rappahannock and Fauquier counties, that the outlet box and pipes should be removed to make the spring less accessible to the public.
“That is what we call an unprotected spring, which is not really suitable for human consumption,” Dr. Tenney said. “I don’t think that it should be left so that the water is easily accessible to the public.”
The controversy began in February, when the Rappahannock County Health Department received an inquiry from someone who was concerned about the possibility of the spring being contaminated.
At that time, according to district sanitarian Charles Shepherd, the person was told that the water had been sampled in the past and found to be contaminated by coliform bacteria, which indicates that surface water is mixing with the underground aquifer somewhere above the spring’s outlet on the roadside about a mile below Thornton’s Gap.
Coliform bacteria is present in the intestinal tracts of all warm-blooded animals, Shepherd explained, and its presence is considered evidence that the water supply may be contaminated by unclean surface water.
The health department declined a request by VDOT to retest the water, both Shepherd and Tenney said. “There’s no point to testing it,” Tenney explained, “when it doesn’t meet any of the standards for protection. It will test contaminated — and if it tests good today it can test
See SPRING, p. 16
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