The City of Kalamazoo lifted its boil water advisory Monday, after weekend water sample tests showed no further presence of bacteria.
City officials told commissioners at Monday’s meeting that the advisory began after a routine water sample from a tap on Miller Road tested positive for E. coli on Friday, Sept. 18. A resample at that location came back negative the next day, but a separate sample taken on Emerald Drive near Homecrest tested positive for coliform bacteria. Taken together, those results triggered a Tier 1 public notice and boil water advisory effective 7 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, covering 19 of the city’s 22 neighborhoods along with parts of Portage, Comstock, Pavilion, and Cooper townships.
Director of Public Services James Baker told commissioners the advisory was lifted at 7 a.m. Monday, after two consecutive rounds of testing found no detections of bacteria. He said E. coli was never detected anywhere else in the system, including its more than 90 wells, 13 treatment plants, 11 water towers, roughly 800 miles of water main, and about 7,000 fire hydrants, and that the one positive coliform detection did not reappear on resample. As of the city’s August report, staff had conducted 15,909 water quality analyses across 24 testing parameters.
Baker said the advisory represented the lowest of three tiers of water safety warning under state rules, below a boil water order and a do-not-consume order, and that the situation did not meet the legal threshold to trigger the state’s emergency alert system. The city notified residents through media releases, social media, its website, and direct outreach to schools, hospitals, dialysis providers, shelters, neighborhood associations, roughly 370 restaurants and food trucks, and large apartment complexes.
In response to resident feedback about the notifications, Baker said the city plans to integrate its mapping system with its customer information system to enable direct text and email alerts in future events, using contact information collected from about 20,000 customers who updated their account records with the city over the summer.
The city’s after-action review is scheduled for next week. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) is conducting its own assessment, expected to be complete by Oct. 19.
