Erin Brockovich wrote a Facebook post Friday afternoon accusing Tyler Water Utilities of downplaying the seriousness of a contaminant violation in the press and in a notification mailed to its customers this week.

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A very public environmental activist took the city of Tyler to task in a very public way Friday.

Erin Brockovich wrote a Facebook post Friday afternoon accusing Tyler Water Utilities of downplaying the seriousness of a contaminant violation in the press and in a notification mailed to its customers this week.

Within five hours the post had 1,073 likes, 1,702 shares and 284 comments including those voicing concerns about the water, from health issues to its smell.

City officials late Friday said they stood by their water quality, and said a piece of the information in the post was inaccurate.

“Our drinking water is the No. 1 priority of this department,” Assistant City Manager Susan Guthrie said. “We followed exactly what TCEQ requires us to do. We are in no way downplaying this issue. … We believe in those guidelines that are given to us, and we believe in the quality of our water.”

This week, Tyler Water utilities sent out notice to all of its customers that the city exceeded the acceptable level of haloacetic acids, a byproduct of the disinfectant process used to clean the water.

They are “volatile organic compounds that are formed when chlorine reacts with naturally occurring matter in the water,” according to the notice sent to Tyler Water Utilities customers.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality allows 60 parts per billion, and the city’s water tested at 62 parts per billion. Because of the violation, the city was required to send a notice to its customers.

In a Facebook post on her verified account, Ms. Brockovich accused the city of lying about the severity of the contamination. Ms. Brockovich, a self-proclaimed environmental activist and consumer advocate, is known for a 1993 lawsuit against a California power company accused of contaminating a municipal water supply. The lawsuit was made into a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts.

“Officials said the water remains safe to drink,” the post read. “This is a lie, and the story you are being told is completely false. A drinking water violation is a serious thing that cannot just be downplayed in the press.”

City officials said the department followed all necessary protocols required by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and if the containment levels were serious enough, the regulatory agency would have required a more serious reaction on the city’s part.

Clayton Nicolardi, the city’s environmental compliance engineer, said the violation was likely not because of a long-standing problem, rather caused by an influx of organic materials into the system from an abnormally wet spring.

Nicolardi said there is no record of the city ever exceeding the acceptable level of haloacetic acids in the TCEQ database, which goes back to 2004.

City officials said part of the post is factually inaccurate.

Ms. Brockovich said the contamination came from a short-term conversion from chloramines – a combination of ammonia and chlorine – to free chlorine.

The conversion lasted for 30 days, from Aug. 3 to the end of September. The conversion had an effect similar to “shocking” a pool and was intended to burn oxidation out of the pipes and make the water hold chlorine residuals for a longer period of time, Utilities Director Greg Morgan said at the time.

“This is what caused the violation … period,” Ms. Brockovich posted. “You were victims of a (severe) distribution system chlorine burnout. The burnout lasted for two months and (ended) in October.”

Testing for the byproduct is done four times a year and is contracted by a third-party, which picks the testing locations inside the system, city officials said. The recorded levels are then averaged over a total of four reporting periods.

Nicolardi said the assertion that the contamination was caused by the conversion is likely not true, because the single highest sampling average over the four testing periods was recorded in May, before the conversion, and the levels went down afterward.

The mailed notice listed haloacetic acids as a carcinogen if exposed to certain levels over decades, verbiage Nicolardi said is a TCEQ requirement.

“The reason why we don’t have to issue a boil water notice for this is it’s not an acute violation,” he said. “The chronic exposure over a long period of time can potentially cause cancer but not an acute illness where someone is going to the hospital 48 hours later.”

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