DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A recent boil water advisory raised questions from some DeKalb county residents, and a flyer circulating through some neighborhoods has one 11Alive viewer wanting answers.
"Over the weekend, DeKalb County experience a boiled water advisory, and yesterday these [flyers] were found in several neighborhoods in South DeKalb County. If they were found in other neighborhoods, I don't know. My question ... is how legitimate is this?" the post said.
The flyer, shared with 11Alive, advertises and recommends free water analysis so 11Alive's Verify team reached out via the provided contact number to verify whether the service was free. Acquatek Water & Energy responded via email, confirming they test for free and make recommendations after the test is done.
"The card says it all," the email said. "Consumer should test their water and we do the testing for free. All we can do is make recommendations to the consumer after the test is done. Many times there's nothing wrong with their water and a few times the consumer will want to follow our recommendation and purchase a filter for their home. It's up to the consumer to decide at their own time. We tell all consumer that call us that we are NOT with the county and that we are a private company testing their tap water. No one has a problem with that...We are a small good company that cares about the quality of the water as all of the above mentioned companies do all the time."
11Alive also checked with the Better Business Bureau, and an Atlanta spokesperson confirmed the business' accreditation: "There does not seem to be any pattern of complaints at this time. Their accreditation is still valid and they have responded to every complaint."
With that information, we can verify the 'free' promotion, but we also wanted to check with DeKalb County officials. While the county would not comment on any private company, we asked generally speaking, if there's a need for extra testing.
"At this time, no," lab manager Jody Shoemaker said. "Our staff is state certified for a water lab analyst license. We are highly regulated by the EPD. We do testing at the water treatment plant every 8 hours."
"The operators are checking the chlorine every hour. We can schedule a test for customers to go to their home and for us to go out and get a sample," Shoemaker said.
We also brought other questions to DeKalb officials after seeing some people online raised questions about the county water system's testing procedure and infrastructure.
"We have to drive around to the public places and get water from inside the buildings," Shoemaker said, following notification of the advisory. "The main thing is figuring out what areas are affected and sampling those areas, and then we have to come back to the lab and we have to run the tests."
So why the waiting period? Shoemake said 24 hours is standard operating procedure.
"Because we're trying to grow that bacteria and see what bacteria is in that sample," she added.
For questions on infrastructure, 11Alive also spoke to Reginald Wells with DeKalb County's Watershed Management.
"There was basically two different 20 minute or so periods that the plant was actually without primary power from our power provider," Wells said. "However, because we have robust backup generation to power the plant, we were only down for about two to three minutes at a time, during both of those outages."
"Although we were able to maintain pressure at the actual facility where the outage happened, out into our distribution system," Wells said, "Four of our ground storage tanks, for brief periods, lost pressure below 20 psi, which prompted the boil water advisory just out an abundance of caution."
According to Wells, the time to ramp back up a facility of the size of the Scott Candler plant was expected and standard.
"Our water system is completely intact," Wells said. "We recovered within two to three minutes. Again [the advisory is] out of an abundance of caution. The most important thing we do is protect the public. Our product is quality drinking water that's consumed by over 700,000 residents daily, and at no time, do we ever want to impact the public we serve."
DeKalb County also told 11Alive's Liza Lucas that the Scott Candler Water Treatment Plant was upgraded in 2007, and while county CEO Michael Thurmond authorized a review of the response after the power outage, Wells said that's standard procedure.
"DeKalb County has stayed in compliant throughout this whole process. No matter what time frame, sometimes it takes awhile to meet the requirements," Shoemaker said.