State public health officials on Friday cautioned West Virginians to avoid contact with Ohio River water that appears to contain blue-green algae, the latest action as concern continues across the region about a potentially toxic algae that's been moving down the river over the last few weeks.
The state Bureau for Public Health advised residents to "be proactive" and avoid water that looks like spilled paint, has surface scums, mats or films, is discolored or has colored streaks, or has green globs floating below the surface.
Dr. Rahul Gupta, commissioner of the bureau, said that agency officials wanted to get the word out about the issue at the start of the long Labor Day weekend to residents who may be fishing, swimming or boating. "We wanted to make sure going in that people are getting the right information," Gupta said.
Bureau officials stopped short of issuing a more serious "no contact" advisory for the Ohio River. They said that, despite seeing some high levels in some samplings of river water, most samples were well below the 20-part-per-billion concentration for the higher level advisory. They also said that a second requirement for such an advisory - one or more probable cases of human illness or pet deaths attributable to toxic algae exposure - had not been met.
State officials said that they have observed blue-green algal blooms have been observed and monitored between the Pike Island Lock and Dam near Wheeling downriver to the Kentucky border. Visual monitoring and sampling of the Ohio River is ongoing, with work being coordinated between agencies in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, along with the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission. The state Department of Environmental Protection released a collection of aerial photographs showing the extent of the algae growth.
Blue-green algae usually grow in lakes, ponds and slow-moving streams when the water is warm and polluted with an excess of nutrients, such as phosphorous or nitrogen. Algae blooms can be related to fertilizer runoff, sewage overflows and other pollution issues, but the exact cause of this incident has not yet been determined.
On Thursday, West Virginia American Water announced it was beginning construction of new pipelines to use the Guyandotte River as a temporary water supply for its Huntington drinking water plant after finding "elevated levels" of microcystin, a toxin that can be produced by the type of blue-green algae that's been spotted on the Ohio.
West Virginia does not have its own water quality standards or drinking water limits for microcystin, or an official plan for dealing with a situation like the one on the Ohio River, but Gupta said that his agency has for now adopted a strategy borrowed from Ohio, where the problem has been more common, and plans to write its own strategy to use in the future.
Under the Ohio strategy, public health advisories are issued when microcystin levels reach 6 parts per billion and no contact advisories issued when the toxin levels reach 20 parts per billion.
Walt Ivey, director of the bureau's Office of Environmental Health Services, said that test results on Ohio River water have mostly been below those advisory levels, but have also included some results that were much higher, with some as high as 250 parts per billion and 630 parts per billion.
"We haven't seen a lot of them that were high, but there were some that were high," Ivey said. "In most cases, it doesn't look like a problem, but in some cases, they were very high."
Ivey confirmed that results of two of three samples of treated drinking water from West Virginia American's Huntington facility showed some indication of microcystin. But that the levels were lower than the lab's "reporting limit," meaning that they were so low that the lab was not confident it could accurately quantify the actual concentration.
No tests have shown treated drinking water with levels of the toxin above the U.S. Environmental Protection health advisory levels of 1.6 parts per billion for the general public, and 0.3 parts per billion for children 6 years and younger for drinking water.
Ivey said that the results indicate that, so far at least, the Huntington plant, where West Virginia American is using additional powdered activated carbon in its treatment process, is doing its job.
"The treatment is taking out the toxins that are there to a level that is, if it is there, it is extremely low," Ivey said.
In its press release Thursday, West Virginia American Water said that, while "continued testing of the Ohio River at and above the Huntington water treatment plant's intakes indicate elevated levels of microcystin" those results also "show no impact from the algal bloom at this time in the Huntington water system's treated water."
Laura Jordan, a spokeswoman for West Virginia American, said that the highest river water sample that the company had gotten so far testing right at its Huntington intake was 1.7 parts per billion. Jordan described all of the results for treated water as "non-detect."
"The laboratory reports these finished water results as non-detect," Jordan said. "Providing any different information is inconsistent with normal reporting practices and unnecessarily complicates the information."
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.