BY STEFANIE BOWMANN, Eastern Shore Post
Exmore’s director of utilities addressed concerns about the safety and quality of the town’s water at the council meeting on Monday, Dec. 2.
“I want to know what’s being done with the water line that’s bringing heavy metals like iron into the houses there,” said Eileen Kirkwood during a public comment session. “We’re paying for water we can’t drink.”
“The water is 100% safe to drink,” said Taylor Dukes, the utilities and zoning director who will become Exmore’s town manager upon Robert Duer’s retirement at year’s end.
Dukes explained that impurities like iron and manganese are not in the town’s pipes but in its groundwater.
Water samples are taken twice a month, and the water is cleaned and filtered, he said.
The water is chlorinated and run through greensand filters, which remove iron, manganese, and other contaminants.
The filters are made with glauconite, or greensand, so named because of the greenish color of the natural marine sediment.
Dukes noted that the filtration system reduces the amounts of iron and manganese to safe levels but does not completely remove the minerals.
Kirkwood asked how deep Exmore’s wells are and how deep the wells would be if the town sourced its water from another aquifer.
Dukes said the depth of the wells is 170 feet, but if the wells were deeper, “we would have more expense in treating.”
When the town upgraded its water system in 2020, the plan was to drill the new wells to a depth of 220 feet, he said.
However, testing revealed the presence of arsenic in the water at that depth.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality required the town to seal off those wells and drill to a depth of 170 feet, Dukes said.
Contaminants like arsenic must be removed by methods such as reverse osmosis, which can be costly.
Since the Eastern Shore peninsula is surrounded by salt water, deeper wells tend to produce saltier water, further increasing treatment costs, Dukes said.
“So what can be done with the pipes? Because it’s not really as good as you say,” Kirkwood asked.
“People are using less water and it lies in the pipes. We’ve got to blow our pipes out more often. … That’ll help,” Duer said.
Kirkwood also asked about a water line and service points that were identified for replacement.
That project was initiated after the Virginia Department of Health tested for and found lead in the system, Dukes said.
He noted that the federal government creates issues when it mandates certain projects without funding them.
Exmore also has about 10 miles of water mains that eventually will need to be replaced.
“Right now, it’s about $1 million a mile to replace,” Dukes said. “But they don’t have the money right now.”
