City explains notices on water treatment issues

Jacksboro water customers should soon receive a notice in the mail concerning issues with the water.

City Manager Mike Smith explained the notice to city council members at their meeting this week.

“Invariably, you all are going to get asked and I wanted you to know where we’re coming from,” he said.

Smith said quarterly state testing revealed higher levels of disinfection by-products than allowed. 

According to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, disinfection by-products are formed when chlorine reacts with naturally occurring organic carbon.

Smith said the cause of higher levels of by-products has been the excessive rain the city has experienced.

“Because we’ve had so much rain, it’s washed a lot of stuff into our lake. It’s stirred it up. It’s brought more microorganisms into the treatment plant,” he said. “We’ve had to increase our chlorine levels to disinfect, which means we’ve increased our by-product levels as well. That’s why we’ve busted those limits.”

He said many cities in North Texas that have had a lot of rain are having the same problems.

To read the complete article, see the June 17 edition of the Herald-Gazette.