City Tests Say Water Meets Standards

Independent tests conducted last week indicate that Cambridge drinking water does not contain unusually high levels of suspected cancer-causing chemicals, but the city will still take steps to curb the contaminants, City Manager Robert W. Healy said yesterday.

August tests by the State Department of Environmental Quality Engineering showed an average of 132 parts of chloroform and other chemicals per billion of water. Federal standards in the Safe Drinking Water Act limit concentration to 100 ppb.

The studies conducted last week for city officials by two independent Cambridge-based laboratories found that the contaminant levels fell within the maximum allowable at 70 ppb.

The August results were the first for Cambridge to exceed the federal standard since the testing was begun in 1979, according to a spokesman for the state department. She added that tests will be conducted quarterly as long as any of the concentrations are above 50 ppb.

The chemicals, known as trihalomethanes, are formed when chlorine used to kill bacteria in the water mixes with organic material. The most commonly produced substance is chloroform, which causes cancer in lab animals.

Healy said yesterday that he would proceed with a request for $500,000 to set up a new filtration system to replace the current system in use since 1952.

In addition, a cover for the Payson Park reservoir will be considered this spring. The cover would cost $2-3 million according to Cambridge Water Board member Donald E. Horning.

The reservoir, which provides the gravity flow for Cambridge, is "susceptible to acid rain, and junk being thrown into it, and bird droppings," said Francis H. Duehay '55, Chairman of the Cambridge City Council's environment committee.

Healy described the potential danger of high trihalomethane counts as "much ado about nothing--or almost nothing."

The estimates on which the federal standard is based predict that of 10,000 people each consuming two liters of contaminated water daily over 70 years, intances of cancer would increase by three or four cases.

Horning, Professor of Chemistry at the School of Public Health, said of the potential hazard, "It's sort of like driving at 60 miles per hour on a 55 miles per hour highway or like one or two trips to California, or like one or two cigarettes per year."