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LISTEN TO FULL AUDIO FROM BARTLESVILLE WATER UTILITIES DIRECTOR TERRY LAURITSEN.

A boil order issued on July 12 for the City of Bartlesville water system has been removed, effective immediately.

The order was issued by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality following a positive test for E. coli at one of the City’s 40 sampling sites. Subsequent test results for the bacteria were negative.

Bartlesville water customers had been advised to boil water before ingesting it as part of the order, which was announced to the public by the ODEQ on Saturday afternoon.

That order was lifted at approximately 8:15 p.m. on Sunday, July 13.

“We have received notification from the ODEQ that the boil order they had issued for our water system on July 12 has been removed,” said Water Utilities Director Terry Lauritsen. “Yesterday afternoon, we pulled water samples from the area of the site that originally tested positive for E. coli, and representative samples throughout the entire water system.  Those samples, tested by an independent laboratory, did not show any coliform or E. coli.  Due to the results of that testing, we have been removed from the boil mandate and all City of Bartlesville water customers are no longer required to boil City water before ingesting it.”

ODEQ had issued the boil order – the first in the City’s history – after samples pulled from one of the City’s 40 sampling sites, located at 21st Street and Dewey Avenue, on July 10 showed a positive result of E. coli.

“The ODEQ contacted us at 5:45 p.m. on July 10 to inform us of the result,” Lauritsen said. “We asked them at that time if we needed to go on an immediate boil order and were told no, that we needed to resample this site and the area adjacent to it as soon as possible. We flushed this portion of the system on the morning of July 11, resampled and sent those samples to the independent laboratory.

“Late Saturday morning, the laboratory called and said that the original site did not have E. coli, but tested positive for coliform. (Coliform is an indicator of bacterial activity.) The adjacent sites tested were negative for both E. coli and coliform. We received a call from the ODEQ on 12:40 p.m. Saturday (July 12) advising us that we would be placed on a mandatory boil order and they would send us information to publish. We received that information at 2 p.m. on July 12.”

Water Utilities Department crews will continue to monitor this area and investigate what potentially caused this incident.

“Providing safe and reliable drinking water is our highest priority. While we are grateful that the boil water mandate has been lifted, we recognize that important work remains. We are actively investigating the cause of the positive E. coli result at this sampling site,” Lauritsen said.