Jesse Page-Adam's '06's friend Anna Zelinsky '06 didn't heed the posted warnings to test the water in her residence hall laundry room before washing her clothes. As a result, she became another victim to the town of Hanover's semi-annual water-main flushing.
"[She] must have missed the sign, and all of her white clothes turned gray or brownish. They got disgusting," Page-Adams said. "Any time they're flushing the water mains, I don't use the laundry."
The Office of Residential Life posts warnings urging students to test the water before doing laundry, but not all students understand the intricate operation of this regular event.
Hanover floods its water pipes twice a year to remove excess sediment that slowly accumulates in the six months between flushings. The fall's flushing commenced last Friday and will end on campus Tuesday and Wednesday.
The color and smell of the water may be enough to cause concern for some students, who turn up their noises at moldy-smelling showers and odd-colored toilet bowls -- as well as stained clothes.
Hanover's 110-year-old system is partly to blame for the build up of sedimentary in the pipes. When too much rust accumulates in the water, the town must pressurize the pipes to rid them of buildup.
While excessive amounts of rust in drinking water may be grounds for concern, the usual concentrations of iron in the water mains are not harmful to ingest, said Pete Kulbacki, general manager of Hanover Water Works Company.
"Iron is considered a secondary contaminate, really an aesthetic contaminate. It's not toxic," he said.
The chemical chlorine dioxide the Water Works uses to sanitize reservoir water, can also cause rust and other sediments to form in the pipes because it is a chemical oxidizer.
Because Hanover derives its water from three protected reservoirs, fish, animals, microorganisms and sediment can come in contact with the water. These organic matters can cause an unusual olfactory encounter with Hanover water.
The quality of Hanover's water is not compromised by these reservoirs, as far as current tests have found. The water is brought into the city's treatment system, where fluoride is added. The addition of sodium carbonate raises the pH level of the water to "help prevent leaching of lead and copper from household plumbing. Finally, chlorine dioxide is added as a decontaminant," according to the water works.
Hanover hopes a new filtration system, which will be functioning in 2006, will combat such frequent water main flushings by removing iron in the reservoir water before it hits the pipes.
"It will dissolve iron out of the water completely," Kulbacki said, "It will be providing water that doesn't leech the iron out of the pipes now."
The water's quality will also remain more constant.
"You won't see this period of time where [the water quality's] great and then slowly declines," Kulbacki said. However, "We'll still have to flush -- that's the problem with an old system."
A new filtration system will also protect against such bacteria as cryptosporidium, an outbreak of which occurred in Milwaukee, Wisc. in the 1990s.
"We're going an extra step, an extra level of treatment than we need to," Kulbacki said. "Let's prevent the problems from occurring in the first place."