After four days of uncertainty over the city’s water supply, the Onondaga Health Department lifted the advisory against tap water yesterday at 6 p.m.

By purging tainted water from the city system through open fire hydrants and removing the tainted Woodland Reservoir from service, county and city health officials purified the supply for human consumption.

‘Just taking the reservoir out of service kept that water from coming into the system,’ said Gary Sauda, the director of Environmental Services for Onondaga County. ‘The reservoir remains out of service, and the city has done a lot of flushing of the system, and as a result of that we lifted the advisory.’

University officials responded to the advisory by stockpiling and distributing bottled water on campus and staying in close contact with the city and county. In total, the university distributed 55,000 half-liter and 20-ounce bottles of water, 600 1.5-liter bottles, and 550 five-gallon containers, said Kevin Morrow, the university spokesman.

‘After the water advisory came to the university’s attention, there was a conference call of several administrators,’ said Dr. James Jacobs, of SU Health Services. ‘They determined the university should provide bottled water and any steps necessary to see us through the situation until we hear otherwise.’

Over the weekend, university staff flushed out the water in 13 campus buildings where discolored water was reported, Morrow said, which appeared to remove the green-tinted water from the campus.

No health-related complaints were reported to Health Services, Morrow said.

The city discovered extremely high algae counts during a weekly test of the Woodland Reservoir last week. At the same time, calls began coming in from city residents complaining of green-tinted water, as well as reports of clogged water filters.

By Thursday night, a cautionary advisory on consumption of city water had been put into effect.

Claire Poslisil, spokeswoman for the New York State Health Department, said that the advisory was mostly a precautionary measure, because the blue-green algae suspected of tainting the water is not considered harmful to humans in small doses.

Algae are always present in open reservoirs, Sauda said, and the cause of the bloom that prompted the advisory is unknown.

‘The question here is how did this get so high? Why did the level increase?’ Sauda said. ‘Algae responds to sunlight, rainfall, water temperature – what in particular caused this to take off like it did, I can’t say.’

The Woodland Reservoir – a secondary supply of water to the city and suspected origin of the discoloration – remains out of service as city and county officials work on eliminating the excess algae.

Published on August 29, 2004 at 12:00 pm