After Melbourne city officials notified residents about E. coli bacteria found in a routine sample test on April 10, numerous procedures were made to restrict the use of tap water throughout the campus. The notice warned citizens to not consume tap water due to safety concerns, and was later rescinded on April 12 once it was confirmed the city water supply was no longer at risk for contamination.

Assistant Principal Sarah Perry said the situation was resolved quickly due to procedures being followed to assure student and staff safety. Procedures included covering water fountains with plastic bags and providing water bottles for hydration.

“When we get a boil water notice, it’s about the consumption of the water,” Perry said. “We don’t want it to get in our systems. We don’t want to drink it. So we look for all the areas where [drinking contaminated water] might happen. So, the cafeteria, where they’re preparing food, and drinking fountains, and then the ice machines need to be regulated.

E. coli is known for contaminating water supplies with animal and human feces, leading to a variety of illnesses such as diarrhea, sepsis and other illnesses.

“To prevent anyone from getting sick, we had to cover all the drinking fountains to make sure any potable water isn’t being consumed by anybody,” Perry said.

Student Resource Officer Valerie Butler said Principal Burt Clark and other staff members were able to get key information fairly quickly, helping the campus avert a possible health crisis. 

“Anyone who gets their water from the city of Melbourne got a notification [about the E. coli outbreak],” Butler said. “Melbourne sends out alerts about things that have to be pushed out to the community. The whole community got the alert so they could take precautions, and here at school, we obviously got it from several places. I got it from my city sources and Mr. Clark got it from the district.”

Butler said students were able to understand what was going on and made it easy to carry out safety procedures. 

“I don’t think we had any issues with students drinking any water they shouldn’t have after they were informed of what was going on,” Butler said. “We didn’t have any issues where we had shortages of water or anything like that, either.”

Perry said she believes the staff implemented sufficient safety measures to prevent any further issues during the boil water notice. 

“Since the notice got cleared very quickly, it was very helpful in resolving the issue,” Perry said. “If it doesn’t get cleared that quickly again, we would have to do some things differently and communicate with students that safety procedures were in effect. It was only a couple of hours and had a very low impact on our campus.”

By Lily Vu