SDWA Status: No EPA Violations – Louisiana Drinking Water Facility Grade “A”  

• Owner: local government   Population Served:  499
• Location: Alton, LA   Tammany Parish
• Permit: Active LA1103145

Current Notices: St. Tammany Parish government Covington, LA Utilities website

Boil Water Advisory: May 22 -   Alton - Water service in the Alton Water System will be temporarily shut off on Monday, May 22, 2023 at approximately 8:30 AM. Your water service is expected to be off for at least 15 hours or until we are able to place the well back in service. The service interruption is not anticipated to exceed 24 hours; however, unforeseen circumstances may result in a longer duration. Once service is restored, customers will be under a Precautionary Boil Water Advisory until water samples are collected and cleared by the Louisiana Department of Health Laboratory. Discolored water may be experienced once the water service is restored. We will be flushing the lines to clear any possible discoloration.

Water is being turned off to the Alton Water System (PWS LA1103145) to conduct an inspection of the water well and to perform a cleaning and inspection of the water storage tank at the well site. The Alton Water System is a single source system. There is no back up source of water at this time which makes us unable to provide water during this time. A secondary source of water is currently under design to reduce service interruptions such as this in the future.

The Department of Utilities recommends that residents:

• Fill containers with drinking water prior to the water outage (estimate 1-2 gallons

per person or pets)

• Fill containers, bathtubs, and/or washers with water to use for sanitation purposes and to manually fill toilets. Toilets can flush as long as they are manually filled during this time.

The Department of Utilities will also be providing bottled water for drinking during the water outage. A water station will be set up at Little Zion Baptist Church located at 62129 N. 13^th St., to provide drinking water to the Alton Water system customers only.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding. You may contact our office at 985-276-6400 or utilities@stpgov.org with any questions or concerns.

• LA Health Preliminary 2022 Grade: A  90/100   90%
• Points deducted: 5 points deducted for lack of financial sustainability, which can affect operations and maintenance of the water facility; minus 10 points for consumer complaints, 5 points bonus for asset management plan
• Susceptibility Rating: not given
• Water Source – groundwater – Alton well
• System Type: Community water system
• Usage: local usage unknown; US average 400 gallons per day per household, 100 gallons per day per resident
• Contact: St Tammany Parish government, Covington LA 985-276-6400 utilities@stpgov.org

The following information gathered from federal EPA pertains to the quarter ending Dec 31, 2022 (data last refreshed on EPA database April 5, 2023)

Last inspection:  Feb 23, 2021 sanitary survey, complete (State)

Significant deficiencies in Source

Note from Louisiana Department of Health Drinking Water Watch

The Department of Health and Hospitals' Office of Public Health Safe Drinking Water Program monitors over 1,300 public drinking water systems throughout Louisiana to ensure compliance with state and federal drinking water regulations so residents, visitors and tourists have access to safe, clean water.

Safe Drinking Water Program staff collect, analyze and review water system samples to ensure each system does not violate contaminant levels and is meeting monitoring, analytical and treatment technique requirements. This surveillance helps prevent waterborne disease outbreaks or chemical exposure associated with contaminated drinking water.

The program's Drinking Water Watch database shows all historical reports of public water systems in Louisiana. Drinking Water Watch contains all inventory, analytical, compliance and enforcement data. Through this database, you can access public records for these water systems at no cost.

Drinking water information provided in this profile is aggregated from both state and federal EPA sources, the water facility itself and local government sources where available.

EPA publishes violation and enforcement data quarterly, based on the inspection reports of the previous quarter.  Water systems, states and EPA take up to three months to verify this data is accurate and complete.

Specific questions about your local water supply should be directed to the facility manager or operator.

The EPA safe drinking water facilities data available to the public presents what is known to the government based upon the most recently available information for more than one million regulated facilities. EPA and states inspect a percentage of facilities each year, but many facilities, particularly smaller ones, may not have received a recent inspection. It is possible that facilities do have violations that have not yet been discovered, thus are shown as compliant in the system.

EPA cannot positively state that facilities without violations shown in ECHO are necessarily fully compliant with environmental laws. Additionally, some violations at smaller facilities do not need to be reported from the states to EPA. If ECHO shows a recent inspection and the facility is shown with no violations identified, users of the ECHO site can be more confident that the facility is in compliance with federal programs.

The compliance status of smaller facilities that have not had recent inspections or review by EPA or the states may be unknown or only available via state data systems.