Test Your Water | Wasilla Real Estate News, Valley Market Real Estate

Test Your Water May 25th, 2010

Water Test Kit

Arsenic, lead, nitrate, and copper are common contaminants found in water in the Mat-Su Valley. You really need to get your water tested. I found out today that there are about 20 water systems serving subdivisions in the valley that are out of compliance with the Department of Environmental Conservations drinking water program.

These communty systems serve thousands of valley residents. This does not include all the thousands of private wells in the valley. Most private wells are tested for bacteria when they are sold, but few are tested for anything else. Some buyers inspect the water as part of their inspection process when buying a home and more should.

Very few buyers inspect the water of a community system. They assume that it will be inspected by some governing authority. The systems are monitored, but many are not in compliance and are operating under an agreement with DEC while they work to bring their systems into compliance. In the meantime, some are over the guidelines for a number of potentially harmful contaminates.

Once you know what is in your water, you can deal with it. In most cases the right filtering system will take care of the problem. Extreme cases may require a new well. Most of the contaminates are not caused by pollution but are naturally occurring in the ground water so a new well will need to tap into a different aquifer.

The test is easy to do. You can either have one of the local firms do the test…Mat-Su Test Lab is a good one, or you can order the test online. I just ordered one myself from National Testing Laboratories…it cost $178 and tests for 83 different contaminants. I’ll announce the results on this site when I get them back.

Written by Marty Van Diest Please leave a comment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 4:57 pm and is filed under For Buyers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.