For more than a decade, residents in Colton have been experiencing a decline in water quality and many people who live there say they are feeling ignored by officials at the local water district.
While the city has put out notifications about the water quality on their social media channels, residents who spoke to KTLA say one of the main problems is they never know when the water is going to be changing from a clear color to brown.
“It’s okay right now, it’s clear,” Colton resident Cheyenne Hendricks said as she ran her water, “but it could be running just like this and all of a sudden it’s coming out looking like coffee.”
The periodic brown water spews out of faucets and showerheads for many people living in Colton. For Hendricks and her family, she says the brown water flows about once a week, or once every two weeks at least.
The lifelong Colton resident added that she’s fed up with the discolored water, saying it happens at random times and can last from minutes to hours.
“I wouldn’t want to shower in it, and I have,” she said. “I’ve come out and I have marks all over me. I have to wait until it clears up and then go take another shower.”
According to Hendricks, she wants to know exactly what is in the water that she uses to wash her son and the plates her family eats off of.
“They always just tell us we’re flushing the lines or we’re clearing the water hydrants,” Hendricks said.
Through a spokesperson, the city of Colton, which maintains its own water and wastewater facilities, said “various factors can contribute to water discoloration, including hydrant flushing, waterline breaks and, most recently, routine system flushing.”
They added that “during the flushing process, the water flows at higher velocities, which can cause some dissolved iron from old steel pipes to enter the water, resulting in discoloration. It’s crucial to understand that this discoloration is solely an aesthetic concern and does not pose any health risks.”
Kimberly Cousins, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at California State University, San Bernardino, says testing for water safety is a must.
“It is impossible to tell whether water is safe just from the color. The most frequent brown/orange coloring is iron, (non-toxic), but testing must be done to be sure,” she said.
City officials said that the water is tested frequently to ensure it meets state and federal water quality standards, but residents are still asking why they have to keep running their water and being billed for it just to flush everything out.
Officials responded, saying that customers in Colton can contact customer service in order to get a credit on their account.