Col. Falls water supply gets cleared

The Daily Inter Lake

Test results show the water supply for Columbia Falls was not contaminated by vandalism at the city's 2 million-gallon storage tank at Cedar Creek Reservoir.

"All the samples came back fine," City Manager Bill Shaw said Friday.

A state-issued drinking-water health advisory was expected to be lifted late Friday.

The city and the state Department of Environmental Quality took the precaution of issuing an alert Wednesday evening after discovering vandals had attempted to break into the city's water storage tank.

Vandals tampered with the locks of the 18-foot-high tank but didn't gain entry.

It cost the city $1,500 to $2,000 in manpower to drain the tank and flushed it with heavily chlorinated water, Shaw said.

The city is taking steps to increase security at the tank site. It was the first reported vandalism there since the tank was installed more than a decade ago.