Bacterial contamination in the CNMI\u2019s drinking water has decreased over the course of 12 years, according to John McCaroll, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 manager for Pacific Islands Office.<\/p>\n
McCaroll, who visited the Rotary Club of Saipan\u2019s weekly luncheon last Tuesday, said when he first came to Saipan about 13 years ago, people got water for just one to two hours a day. The water that was tested back then had bacterial contamination, McCaroll said.<\/p>\n
Now, 90 percent of Saipan has water and bacterial contamination \u201cwent from common to almost rarity in drinking water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McCaroll lauded the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. for improving its water infrastructure over the years.<\/p>\n
In 2013, the water CUC served its consumers met all EPA primary standards, he said.<\/p>\n
The primary source of water for the island of Saipan comes from 135 groundwater wells, one spring, and two Maui-type wells. One Maui-type well supplies all of the CUC Tinian water system.<\/p>\n
On Rota, the water primarily comes from two surface water sources that are occasionally supplemented with groundwater from three deep groundwater wells. To control bacterial contamination in the water, CUC water operators add trace amounts of chlorine to the water before it is distributed into the pipelines to its customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo things are better and yet it is still salty that you can\u2019t drink it through the faucet. So it is a challenge, unlike other places where you turn on the faucet and you don\u2019t think about and just drink it. There is still ways to go but there has been big improvements from the last 10 to 12 years,\u201d McCaroll said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bacterial contamination in the CNMI\u2019s drinking water has decreased over the course of 12 years,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[260,49,257,261],"class_list":["post-190654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-commonwealth-utilities-corp","tag-cuc","tag-nmi","tag-rotary-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}