Thursday, December 7, 2000 Older Editions

Downtown danger: Brook's E. coli count again high

By Rebecca Piro

Don't drink the water. Don't wade in it, don't play in it, and don't let your dog drink it, for that matter. For the second time in as many years, Rogers Brook has tested dangerously high in terms of E. coli bacteria counts, says Health Director Everett Penney.

"(E. coli bacteria) is present in the intestines of warm blooded animals," says Penney. "If you have it showing up in the water, it's indicative of fecal material from beavers, Canadian geese, or it could be from human beings."

Such high E. coli counts - as high as 60,000 per sample, when the acceptable level is 200 per sample - were found this summer when the Department of Public Works conducted regular testing of town groundwater. The levels brought to Penney's attention could be evidence of a septic or sewer problem, he says.

Rogers Brook runs from the Phillips Academy bird sanctuary through the downtown, and empties into the Shawsheen River by Dundee Park. A good part of the brook runs underground, says Penney.

The brook has tested positive for high E. coli counts in the past. In 1999 DPW found levels as high as 6,000 coming from a public housing complex on Morton Street. The problem was traced to a failed pumping station and a broken sewer line, which was repaired. The readings returned to normal almost immediately, says Penney.

"The counts dropped dramatically, to less than 100," he says. "You're always going to have some contamination, from run-off, Canadian geese (droppings) and dogs."

But when Penney saw the reports from samples taken this summer, he knew that the new, higher levels of contamination were coming from a much bigger problem than animals.

"Low and behold, we found areas in the downtown area that were still showing high levels of contamination - 40, 50, and 60,000," says Penney. "When (the numbers are that high), that indicates some kind of contamination from somebody's sewer, or direct discharge from somebody's toilet."

To date, DPW has traced the problem to the downtown area near Andover Bank. But that doesn't mean that the bank is the source, says Penney. The counts could simply indicate that area i where a pipe happened to break, or that an old pipe is dumping its contents there.

"The plan is to continue to trace back the lines to identify the actual source of where it's coming from," he says.

It is too soon to guess how the town will correct the problem once the source is identified, Penney says. Until then, he advises that people stay away from the brook where it runs above ground, because exposure to such high levels of the bacteria can be harmful to people.