White water: It's just oxygen

The cloudy oxygen in the water will disappear in 30-40 seconds.

Cloudy, milky white water coming out of the taps poses no health risk to Mountain Home residents.

It's just oxygen.

The water is coming from the refurbished pump at well No. 9 near the golf course. For years, the pump had been a problem for the city, with intermittent flows. "Everybody, except (driller Mark) Hiddleston, said we could only get water there when the irrigation lines were full," Mayor Tom Rist said. But in fact, the problem was that the pump had been set to only 200 feet in the 600-foot well.

The city refurbished the well and dropped the pump to the bottom of the well. "We started pumping and the water came out crystal clear and ice cold," Rist said.

It's because of the coldness of the water that the water looks cloudy.

Dissolved oxygen in the water is released as it warms up. The cloudiness will disappear in 30-40 seconds.

There were some other complaints this week involving a separate problem -- air in the lines, which caused some rattles and bangs in pipes in some parts of the north end of the city.

That was because a pump in one of the wells was actually pumping air at times. The city quickly solved that problem by throttling back the pump from 1,800 gallons per minute to 1,600.