How many Hutchinson residents read the “2008 Drinking Water Report” the city’s Water Department sent out earlier this month?

Probably not many, plant supervisor Dick Nagy readily admitted Tuesday as he sat at his office in Hutchinson’s new $15 million plant overlooking the intersection of State Highway 7 and Prospect Street. The report, required by the Minnesota Department of Health, actually contains interesting water plant facts.

Residents reading it will see that the amount of copper found by the health department in water samples tested in 2007 had less than half the limit where action must be taken. And if any residents actually kept their 2007 report of 2006 water samplings, they’d see that the amount of copper in their water is down by about 75 percent.

“The previous level in 2006 was 2.22 parts per million,” Nagy said. “We were well over the action level of 1.3. That was one of our concerns and one of the goals we were trying to achieve — to lower that corrosive level.”

A by-product of the plant’s ability to lower the copper corrosiveness of Hutchinson water was a softening of the water by about 75 percent, too.

For more about the water plant and an open house later this year, read the July 17 print edition of the Leader.

(Terry Davis is a Hutchinson Leader staff writer. E-mail him at davis@hutchinsonleader.com [2].)