We have a follow-up to a story we first brought you on Monday.
Families of kids in the Clyde Cancer Cluster hired a private company which began environmental testing this week to find out if something in the air or water is making kids sick.
On Wednesday 13abc was the only media inside the Clyde Water Treatment Plant as a lime sludge sample was taken.
"If one breaks down, we have another," says Superintendent of the Clyde Water Treatment Plant Phil Farrar as he stands in the pump room.
Farrar allowed 13abc inside secure rooms to see what happens before water gets pumped to the water towers and eventually to homes in the community.
"If you could track one piece of water as it came through from where it enters the plant to where it would pump out is seven to eight hours," says Farrar.
"It's well managed," says Joel Hebdon, the environmental strategist hired by the families of kids with cancer. "I'm impressed. They do a good job. It's clean, which is 90 percent of my judgement criteria."
On Monday Hebdon climbed up into the attics of homes where kids lived and died. There he collected dust samples.
Wednesday he's collecting lime sludge from the Clyde Water Treatment Plant.
Three ounces is all he needed.
"The lime sludge collects pollutants, contaminants as they drop out of the drinking water processing system right here," says Hebdon. "So we can get a concentrated sample in one location."
Farrar says lime is commonly added in water treatment across the country. It helps balance the pH and soften the raw water that comes in from the reservoir.
The lime sludge then gets filtered out in the cleansing process and put in a basin behind the plant. It's about 10,000 gallons a day.
"Dirt, sand, algae in the reservoir and things we don't want to talk about that come from fish and birds and everything," says Farrar.
Just like the dust samples, Hebdon will analyze the lime sludge looking for carcinogens such as PCBs and other toxic metals.
Results are expected within the next three weeks.
Workers at the Clyde Water Treatment Plant do their own testing regularly inside the facility, but Farrar welcomes the attention.
"If there's something here that we don't know about, I want to find out," says Farrar. "I don't believe there is, but this will just eliminate more things for the families. I understand how they feel, and if they were mine I would try everything I could to try to find out what it is.
Alan Mortensen, the attorney for the families, says negative results would narrow down the list of what could be causing the cancer cluster.
"That's not a bad thing," says Mortensen. "We don't want the Clyde water system to be polluted in any way, we just thought as a matter of due diligence for the families and the community, we should test it."
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