Pink Tap Water Startles Louisiana Residents

Right in time for Valentine’s Day, the water in a Louisiana city turned pink, and residents weren’t happy about it.

“On Monday, some Lake Charles residents found pink water coming out of their faucets. It was found in sinks and bathtubs from multiple locations around town,” KPLC reported.

The city water department weighed in with a statement, per KPLC:

The water division has received a few calls concerning a pinkish discoloration of water near the Center Street East Plant. The superintendent has checked the effluents and chemical feed and detected no problems. It is possible that there may have been a slight overfeed of potassium permanganate used to treat manganese. The department is now performing flushing in the area reporting pinkish water, and they will monitor the plant effluent for the remainder of the day.

The water division noted that the water is safe to drink. They said “crystal clear” water has been flowing in the time since the complaints arrived.

Lake Charles is not the first city to surprise ratepayers with pink tap water. When Ohio tap water turned pink in 2009, potassium permanganate was the cause there, too, according to USA Today. Kansas City faced a similar issue last month when “an excess of sodium permanganate was added to the raw water treatment overnight,” according to KSHB.

Potassium permanganate, the culprit in Lake Charles, is usually added to treatment processes at the raw water intake, according to the U.S. EPA's water treatability database. It is generally followed by conventional treatment or granular activated carbon, membrane filtration, and chlorine disinfection. Per the database:

Permanganate is a strong oxidant used primarily to control taste and odors, remove color, control biological growth in treatment plants, control zebra mussels in intake structures and pipelines, and remove iron and manganese. Permanganate can also be used for controlling the formation of trihalomethanes and other disinfection byproducts by oxidizing precursors and reducing the demand for other disinfectants. Permanganate has also shown to lower coagulant dose requirements and improve clarification.

In Lake Charles, the pink water alarmed locals. Jason Higginbotham told KPLC: "After I put my child in the shower, she put the stopper in. My older son came in and said that the water was pink so I went in and took her out of the shower and started flushing the toilet. I turned the sink on and it still ran pink for awhile so we just got her out of the bath and I ran the water for about 30 minutes until it all went away."

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Drinking Water Contaminant Removal Solutions Center.