McHenry private water company says fixing aged system will take time

In the 66 years Charlotte Urban has lived in the Eastwood Manor subdivision north of McHenry, the 93-year-old has spent untold amounts on bottled water to avoid the iron-filled water from her taps.

Her neighbor, Jason Vetter, buys a 24-pack of bottled water twice a week for his family to drink. He calls the water coming out of his faucets “bi-polar.”

“Some days are clear; some days are brown and with the sediment. It is rough and texture-y,” Vetter said.

Aqua Illinois Inc., which purchased the neighborhood’s water system in late 2015 and began operating it in 2016, has completed several projects to improve the aging water system, and filtering out iron is next on its list of fixes, Illinois Director of Operations Andy Price said.

The private water system serving 325 homes and fewer than 900 residents has decades of issues, according to state records and media reports.

Eastwood Manor sits on the northwest corner of Route 120 and Chapel Hill Road. Urban’s home on Country Lane was one of the first two built in the subdivision of largely post-World War II housing. When she, her husband and young son moved there in 1957, the water wasn’t so bad.

“Slowly, the water seemed to get worse with more people using it. It just got to be so much rust,” Urban said.

She reached out to government officials in the 1980s, who sent someone out to test her home’s water. An inspector said it might be brown, but it was fine to drink, Urban said, scoffing at the idea.

“Nobody ever drank it. We always had to buy water,” Urban said.

Problems with the water in the subdivision go back to long before Aqua purchased the system, to when Eastwood Manor’s water provider was the Eastwood Manor Water Company. Archived Northwest Herald news stories talk of community meetings, boil orders, billing issues, lower water pressure and iron-rich water.

In 1986, McHenry School District 15 sought relief through the Illinois Pollution Control Board due to the high concentrations of iron in the water system. A remediation plan was set up then to ensure the water was treated and flushed to help reduce iron concentrations in the water going to schools. Hilltop Elementary School was taken off the system later.

In 1996, the state of Illinois and McHenry County sued the water supplier for deficiencies in the system, including non-working fire hydrants, according to media reports at the time.

“They went through all kinds of things, meetings; it did nothing,” Urban said.

Stephanie Tesmer lives up the block from Urban and Vetter on Manor Lane. She hasn’t lived in Eastwood Manor as long as Urban, having bought a house there in October 2021.

Nobody ever drank it. We always had to buy water.

—  Eastwood Manor resident Charlotte Urban, 93

Tesmer has now taken up the fight that other residents did in the past for better water quality from their private water system. She has reached out to Aqua Illinois, asking for a fix sooner than later.

Some days the water appears clear as it comes out of her faucet, but still tastes strongly of iron, Tesmer said. Her house has a water softener and 5-gallon bottled water dispenser in the kitchen for drinking and cooking.

Like Tesmer, Vetter said he drains his hot water heater every two months to get sediment out. At one point, he looked at an in-house filtration system to treat water as it comes from the main. The $5,000 quote he got for the system was more than his family can afford.

The technician that came out to give him the quote told him a filtration system could make the water look clear but it would not remove all of the iron, Vetter said. So instead, his family keeps buying bottled water every few days.

Before Aqua Illinois purchased the Eastwood Estates water system, iron concentrations there were as high as 16 milligrams per liter, Price said. It’s down to 2.2 to 2.4 milligrams per liter.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends iron levels fall below 0.3 milligrams per liter. The level is not a federal requirement and applies to contaminants like iron that have cosmetic effects, such as skin or tooth discoloration, or aesthetic effects, such as to taste, odor or color, in drinking water.

Iron is not hazardous to drink, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which noted that “as little as 0.3 [milligrams per liter] can cause water to turn a reddish brown color.”

Between 1980 and 2016, before Aqua took over the system, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency cited the system for 123 violations, according to state data.

“We purchase a lot of systems [that are] just like this system was. It was neglected for years,” Prince said.

It isn’t surprising to city of McHenry Public Works Director Troy Strange that Eastwood Manor’s water has a high iron concentration. All of McHenry’s water plants have iron filtration units.

“If you were inside a water plant, two-thirds of the space in ours are iron filtration,” Strange said.

Even with treating for iron, McHenry’s municipal water contains iron as it is a common issue throughout McHenry County, Strange said. Whether water is coming from a private or municipal well, “for the shallow wells, a few hundred feet and shallower, iron is an issue.”

In the eight years since it acquired the system, Aqua has performed work to help alleviate the issues, Price said. They added a valve at the water tank to allow draining and cleaning, added more treatments to the water and flush hydrants twice a year.

They also reduced the amount of water lost. When the company took over, just 56% of the water pumped was accounted for. Now that number is up to 90%. So far, Aqua has reinvested about $1 million into the system.

What it cannot change is the water’s source.

“The source water has iron in it,” Price said, but he also said repairs done so far have helped to improve water quality.

What Aqua can – and plans to do – is filter the water for iron. But that involves engineering, designs, EPA permits and likely the construction of a new pump house.

Price had no hard numbers but guessed an iron filtration system would be a $1 million investment there.

Planning or paying for the work isn’t about the small size of the system, Price said. “It is the same amount of capital invested toward it as a system with 3,200 customers.”

With the legwork needed to add a filter system, the best case scenario for getting it running is late 2025, Price said.

“I feel that it can be by the end of ‘25, but I don’t want to tell people wrong and have customers upset,” Price said. “We have done everything we can do. The next step is the iron removal.”