River quality review

Jay County Commissioners reviewed a water quality report for the Salamonie River that showed several instances of pollutants above the acceptable limits in the county.
The commissioners will meet with representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers and Indiana Department of Environmental Management next week to discuss the results.
Jay County Soil and Water Conservation District educator Bettie Jacobs presented the report to the commissioners. The report breaks down three rounds of water testing on the Salamonie River in Jay, Blackford, Wells and Huntington counties during 2010.
One major point of concern is an E. coli reading May 2010 for a test site at the bridge over the Salamonie River on Blaine Pike south of Portland, which tested more than eight times higher than the acceptable level.
The reading was 1,920 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, well above the guideline level of 235 colonies per 100 milliliters.
“That is not good,” Jacobs said. “That is really not good.”
Other areas nearby also tested high, including test sites at West 7th Street in Portland and South Wayne Street, which both came in at 420 colonies per 100 milliliters.
During that May test, eight of the 13 Jay County test sites were above acceptable limits for E. coli.
The commissioners posited this morning that heavy rainfall prior to testing could have caused sewage to overflow into the river. There is a combined sewer overflow site just south of 7th Street along with Salamonie, but that site is more than a half-mile from Blaine Pike.
Jay County also reported high readings in other tests areas, including nitrogen ammonia, phosphorus, chloride, sulfates and organic carbon.
The commissioners will meet to discuss the Salamonie River report April 4 at 2 p.m. at the Community Resource Center, 118 S. Meridian St., Portland.
In other business this morning, the commissioners:
•Discussed what to do about properties that did not sell in a recent tax certificate sale. The commissioners agreed to have county engineer Dan Watson assess the properties to determine if any structures may need to be razed.
Attorney Bill Hinkle suggested that the City of Dunkirk might be interested in taking ownership of some of the properties if the county would take title to them and then convey the land over via quit claim deed. The commissioners said they would contact Dunkirk officials to see if the city would be interested in claiming the properties.[[In-content Ad]]