Quantcast

Residents fume over tap water


And for Carole Paynter, who lives on…

By Courtney Dentch

For some residents in the Rosedale area, loads of laundry that was once white comes out of the washing machine a murky brown and water filters that are supposed to last four months need to be replaced in two weeks.

And for Carole Paynter, who lives on 243rd Street, only one thing has been consistent about her water for the past four months: she doesn’t want to drink it.

“We don’t really drink the water anymore because we don’t trust it,” she said.

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection said the water is safe to drink, although it suffers from what the agency calls aesthetic problems, said Charles Sturcken, chief counsel for the agency. DEP has received numerous complaints about the water in that area for the last year, he said, with residents citing problems like discoloration and sediment.

Despite the city’s reassurances that the water is safe and the system will flush itself out, Paynter said she and others in Rosedale have been living with these water problems for too long.

Paynter has lived in Rosedale for the past seven years, and sometimes, especially when it would rain and her neighborhood would flood, the water would carry extra sediment into the houses, she said. But the water would always clear up in a minute, she said.

These days the water just stays cloudy, she said.

“We have been experiencing problems where water can be from a light brown color to really dark,” she said. “Some days it doesn’t come out consistently and it looks better, but it’s not.”

Neighbors have complained that they cannot do white loads of laundry for fear the items will end up dyed a brown color and one woman even tried cleaning her hot water tank to solve the problem, but to no avail, Paynter said.

“It’s very disheartening when you see it coming out of the tap like that,” she said.

Waverly Howard, a Rosedale resident, used to use filters to clean his water, which is plagued by the same problems Paynter is facing, but the filters did not last long, he said.

“Our water is hard,” he told a town hall meeting held by City Councilman James Sanders Jr. (D-Laurelton) last week. “I bought a four-month filter that lasted just two weeks.”

When Paynter and others filed complaints with the DEP, she said the agency came out and did tests and flushed out the pipes, but the problem did not go away. “The problem hasn’t ceased at all,” she said.

Paynter and the DEP attribute the problems to construction projects going on in the area, including about 15 capital projects to ease chronic flooding in the community by improving sewer and water lines, Sturcken said.

“When you do a lot of these projects, it adds to the distribution problems in the area and kicks up silt,” he said. “The community will experience a large amount of discoloration.”

Part of this construction is also replacing infrastructure from the old Jamaica Water Supply well system, which the city bought in 1996, Sturcken said.

“It will entail disruption, but at the end of the day we’re going to get better infrastructure in that area,” Sturcken said. “We’re hoping the community will have the patience to wait it out.”

But Paynter and others are out of patience, she said.

“Construction can be a good thing,” she said. “We can endure this for a little while but not for such a long time.”

Sturcken agreed that four months of disruption to the water service is excessive, and said the average disruption is about a week.

“That’s too long,” he said. “There is a lot of work going on, but four months is too long.”

If you are experiencing similar water problems, Sturcken suggests letting the water run to flush out the pipes. If the water is still cloudy, you can report the disruption to 718-DEP-HELP.

Reach reporter Courtney Dentch by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com, or by phone at 229-0300, Ext. 138.