Several North Pinellas cities will use chlorine to clean the water system for about six weeks.
By JOSE CARDENAS
Published December 5, 2005
Pinellas County is temporarily changing the way it disinfects the drinking water of more than 500,000 people for the next month.
You might notice a change in the taste, but no one should experience any adverse effects, according to county officials.
The switch was scheduled to start today and last until Jan. 13 for drinking water going to customers in Clearwater, Safety Harbor, Tarpon Springs, parts of Oldsmar and Pinellas Park.
The change, a routine maintenance procedure, involves using chlorine instead of compounds called chloramines to disinfect the water.
Chloramines are a combination of chlorine and ammonia, which contains nitrogen.
Chlorine can be fatal for dialysis patients during the hemodialysis process and can kill aquatic animals, but county officials do not expect the change to cause any trouble.
That's because facilities that treat dialysis patients already have extensive systems to remove chlorine and other contaminants from water, said Robert Powell, director of the county's utilities laboratory department.
"Everything they are doing to remove chloramines, they remove chlorine as well," Powell said.
Likewise, fish owners should already have systems to remove chlorine.
"If they don't, they don't own live fish," Powell said.
If anything, Powell said people should know the water will have chlorine as a decontaminant - just in case they test it with their usual instruments and can't detect chloramines.
Pinellas County utilities used chlorine as a disinfectant until 2002 when it switched to chloramines.
It switched at the same time that Tampa Bay Water, which provides water to most of the region, stopped using chlorine.
Like water providers around the country, Tampa Bay Water abandoned chlorine to meet federal requirements calling for the reduction of nine compounds in water, some of which could cause cancer over prolonged exposure.
Chloramines are more effective in reducing these cancer-causing compounds.
But in general, Powell said, they are a slightly weaker disinfectant that allows other forms of bacteria to build up in a water system. The bacteria, in turn, reduce the effectiveness of the chloramines.
The county flushes the water system periodically but once a year switches temporary to chlorine to more effectively clean out the bacteria, Powell said.
"It's like washing the pitcher out after you have used it for a while," he said.
