COLDWATER
Not for the first time, Tina Dale stood in her yard Wednesday morning and watched two men fill tiny glass bottles with water from her neighbors' yard spigot.
Mrs. Dale and others in the Coldwater community are getting used to the Army testing their drinking water for pollution. The annual tests began two years ago because of concerns about trichlorethylene (TCE) and other chemicals migrating in the groundwater from the Anniston Army Depot.
This year's survey of private wells started one month earlier than planned. The Army bumped up the survey due to last week's discovery of unusually high amounts of TCE in a monitoring well located halfway between the Anniston Army Depot and Coldwater Spring, the major drinking water supply for Anniston and several other communities.
Mrs. Dale, a retired Army employee, shares her well with the Traylor family, who lives next door on Turner Road. "This well has been furnishing us with plenty of water. It's good water, as far as I know," she said.
In a little more than a week, Mrs. Dale and others will begin receiving results of the Army's new round of tests in the mail.
Since testing began in 2000, the 70 private wells used by Mrs. Dale and others who live near the Anniston Army Depot have tested clean of TCE and other volatile organic compounds - hazardous chemicals that have spread out in plumes in the groundwater from the Anniston Army Depot.
However, other wells, dug by the Army, have shown unusually high concentrations of TCE, a suspected carcinogen that can cause liver and kidney damage.
The residential wells began receiving annual scrutiny shortly after high levels of contamination showed up in Cooper's Catfish Lakes in Bynum and in several Army-dug monitoring wells on the boundary of the depot's industrial area.
Army contractors and the Environmental Protection Agency began retesting the residential wells Wednesday morning.
EPA is collecting split samples on the first six wells, to certify the Army's test results, said Dan Thoman, an EPA engineer who accompanied the Army contractors on Wednesday's trip through Coldwater.
The remainder of the 70 private wells will be tested by Army contractors over the next few weeks, according to Army environmental engineer Patrick Smith.
