SPANISH FORK — The attorney for residents of a troubled subdivision says contamination may have permeated plastic pipes and gotten into the city water supply.
If so, the contamination could spread to neighboring properties.
"I don't know that the water is contaminated," attorney David Boyer said, "but it's possible."
City officials, however, were quick to deny that the culinary water was contaminated.
"He has no evidence to support that," City Attorney Junior Baker said. "As far as we know there are no problems with the water."
Tests have been conducted, but more tests are needed, said Dr. Joseph Miner, Utah County Health Department director. In the meantime he recommended Spanish Fork Ranch residents drink bottled water.
"It sounds like someone is trying to stir up a bunch of things," Mayor Dale Barney said.
The water pipes that run underneath the Spanish Fork Ranch subdivision, which is built over an old landfill, are also connected to the city's main trunk line, Boyer said. At issue is whether organic material, including oil-based products such as cleaning solvents and used motor oil, could permeate the pipes, which are made of polyvinyl chloride. Boyer said he doesn't know if any oil-based products were dumped in the landfill, but it could have happened over the life of the dump.
Putting plastic water pipes in an old landfill is not acceptable because the pipes are permeable, Miner said. The pipes met city standards, however.
Boyer has issued a demand letter to the city that it move his clients because of questions about the drinking water and supply them with bottled water until that can be done.
City Engineer Richard Heap says he isn't jumping to any conclusions until he receives the results of recent drinking water tests the city and state Division of Drinking Water recently conducted.
City officials know the plastic pipe could be permeable and that the lines run through trash, Boyer said. Trash in the water pipe trench was discovered when workmen dug into it as they were trying to repair a broken water line. The water was tested after the city repaired the pipes, Baker said.
"It came back good," he said.
However, utility trenches were supposed to have been cleaned out and the trash hauled away during construction.
"The city issued no warning" when the pipe was installed, Boyer said. Officials should have known of the potential risk when the pipe was installed in a former trash dump, he said. Boyer represents more than 30 people in seven households suing developer Ron Jones.
Meanwhile, results from tests of water draining from the landfill into a nearby wetlands area show it is contaminated, possibly with arsenic, lead, chromium and cadmium, all heavy metals, Boyer said. But further tests are needed to determined exactly what is in the water, he said.
In another development, tests conducted by Brigham Young University environmental science students found that methane gas was in the dirt cap covering the landfill only where the cap had been disturbed.
Because of the problems at Spanish Fork Ranch, the City Council on Tuesday voted to hire SCS Engineering of Los Angeles to study the design of the subdivision and make recommendations to the council. The firm has worked with hundreds of landfill sites, while three local engineering firms that worked with the subdivision and said it was OK had no experience with construction on top of a landfill, Baker said. The council authorized a contract with the California firm up to $10,000.
"They'll give us straightforward answers," he said.
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com