Rowan County, N.C.: Commissioners Set to Approve Well Water Tests

Salisbury_NC_ParkThis North Carolina county Health Department has discovered vanadium and hexavalent chromium present in well water near a coal ash pond.

As a result, the director of the Department is asking for approval to spend up to $150 per test kit to test for these contaminants. That might be a fair price, given that the county needs to pay for employees, travel and postage.

But, there are alternatives. For instance, Drinking Water Specialists offers a comprehensive water test that not only includes testing for these contaminants but another 168 targeted parameters.

We believe well owners need to act as their own “water department”. That’s because they are responsible for maintaining the potable quality of their drinking water. In this case, the county is doing a great job of being proactive about helping well owners in the area surrounding the runoff from the coal ash pond. But, there are a lot more contaminants that well owners need to be testing for.

Our water test is an easy way for the well owner to get their water tested. They can order the test kit online. Once we get the order, we ship the kit out. It contains water vials and easy-to-follow instructions. The well owner just fills the vials with water, puts them back into the original box and ships it back to our lab. In about 6 business days, we email the test report back to the well owner along with information on how to treat their water should they have a problem. We pay for postage both ways.

There is one thing we ask the well owner to test themselves—testing for the presence or absence of pathogenic bacteria. This is a very simple, yet very accurate test, to do. We do this because we have found over the years that there isn’t a good way to ship the water samples back to our lab and maintain the proper and consistent temperature while in transit that’s required for the most accurate bacteria test. Also, bacteria testing is best performed within 24 hours of putting the water sample into the vial.

We only charge $129 for this extensive test. That’s because we test for the same set of parameters for all of these water tests. That saves us setup time and the time to prepare the reports—standardization makes our testing more like an assembly line process as opposed to the process that nearly all other labs use. We pass these savings onto our customers.

Follow this link to see the list of 170 targeted parameters we test for: “Bang-for-the-Buck Essential Indicators Water Test”

If you want to learn more about this test go to this page

Here’s the link to the original article from the Salisbury Post: “Commissioners set to approve well water tests for Rowan residents”

We really believe all well owners need to follow our tagline: “Take control, manage the quality of your drinking water.”

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