St. Charles considering its water system after residents note issues

ST. CHARLES – St. Charles officials recently have been flooded with complaints about hard, discolored water coming out of taps in some homes on the northwest side of the city, particularly in The Reserve near Route 31 north of Red Gate Road.

City officials announced this week they plan to conduct a comprehensive study to determine what improvements may be needed to ensure water quality city-wide.

“We’d like to have a consistency in water throughout the city,” Alderman Art Lemke said.

The study would establish a 10-year water utility master plan for possible system improvement projects in the future, as well as funding options. It would include evaluating water hardness and ways it could be alleviated.

Some areas of the city have softer water because of radium reduction systems that feature deeper wells and ion exchange filtering systems. The filtering systems have a water softening effect, said Tim Wilson, environmental services manager for the Public Works Department.

However, the city does not provide water softening to its entire distribution system, Wilson said.

When the city developed its last master plan for the water system 10 years ago, the City Council decided against installing a community-wide water softening system. The reasons were the high cost and health concerns about adding salt to the water to soften it, said Mark Koenen, city administrator.

With a cost of about $30 million, the water softening system would increase household water bills $100 to $200 annually, resident Rhonda Brooks learned from the city. But Brooks, who lives in The Reserve, said that is far less than the expense her family has borne so far to soften their water.

Brooks said they installed a sediment and reverse osmosis filter and a water softener. That, plus buying salt and having to replace refrigerator filters often, has cost about $3,000. She worries about future expenses that could result from the hard water.

“I can’t afford to replace my appliances every few years – hard water destroys them,” Brooks said.

Brooks supports the city doing the water system study “to see what it will take to soften all the water in St. Charles.”

“We all just want better quality of water,” she said.

Costing up to $125,000, the study will take about a year to complete. The city is seeking bids from qualified companies, and the City Council could award a contract for the study as soon as October.

Although hard water in varying degrees is an issue throughout the city, Wilson said lead is not an issue. Lead content in all city water meets or exceeds Environmental Protection Agency standards, he said.