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Stinky water is not making people sick in Bloomington

By Clayton Baumgarth

Posted September 7, 2022

Lake Monroe, the city's main freshwater source. (Nyttend / Wikimedia Commons)

The odd taste of Bloomington’s city water the last week or so is not dangerous to your health, an IU professor in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs said Tuesday. 

Todd Royer said the compounds geosmin and MIB produced by bacteria and algae in the city’s freshwater source are making the water taste and smell funny, but they won’t hurt you. And he attests to that quite personally 

“I drink unfiltered tap water. So I'm not just saying that they're harmless,” he said. “I actually drink the water out of the tap, because I'm not concerned about the taste or odor.” 

There’s a lot at play that’s causing the water to smell and taste this way, making it hard to predict when “odor outbreaks” will happen and when they will end. The water temperature must be just right to produce specific types of microorganisms, he said. And not all strains of those microorganisms will actually produce the smelly compounds. 

“It's very difficult to predict when this is going to happen,” he said. “But in general, this is the time of year that we would expect it.” 

As to why the water treatment facility can’t fix the water; it’s incredibly expensive.

“These compounds are extremely difficult to remove from the water,” Royer said. “You can do it but it's very expensive. And so it's simply cost prohibitive to try and remove these compounds. And the fact that they're harmless, there's just no real incentive to do that.” 

Royer did make a point to note, “Some of the taxa or the types of cyanobacteria that produce these compounds, can also produce toxins that are quite dangerous. But again, the smell itself, there's nothing harmful about that, or the compounds that produce that smell.”

He said that suggests there are populations of cyanobacteria in the lake that we might want to track and sort of monitor. 

As for how long until the taste dissipates, it’s hard to say. Royer said a good rain and a change in temperature should fix it. 

 

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