The West Palm Beach VA Medical Center is still losing the war on legionella.
The water-borne bacteria has been a concern at the VA Medical Center for months, but now the facility thinks it has the answer.
They’ve taken the significant step of taking their water-tower off line, which means they’ve stopped using it. The water tower holds a half-million gallons.
The water they get from the city of Riviera Beach already has a disinfectant in it. But the VA found that once the water is pumped from their water tower, throughout its main building, the disinfectant level dropped. That might explain why so far they’ve lost the legionella battle.
Jon Roberts, chief of facilities management at the VA Medical Center says the water is tested for legionella bacteria quarterly. The past three quarterly tests showed traces of legionella in the water.
The VA hopes shutting down the water tower could be the answer. They’ve also installed special filters on all the showers and are using bottled water dispensers for drinking water.
