Legion of experts constantly guarding water against intrusion by contaminants
By Kevin Dougherty,
Stars and Stripes
RHEIN-MAIN AB, Germany — Twice a month, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Lazarus
grabs what looks like a pair of tackle boxes and sets out to test the waters.
Lazarus isn’t fishing, though. Instead, he’s testing the water at Rhein-Main
Air Base for excessive bacteria that could pose problems if left unchecked. On this day,
the microscopic buggers weren’t out in great numbers.
“I drink the water,” says Lazarus, a bioenvironmental engineer. “I live
in the housing area. I have a 5-year-old daughter, Christine, so, quite honestly,
it’s nice to know the water is safe to drink.”
Lazarus is among the legion of people entrusted with monitoring and improving the
quality of drinking water at U.S. military installations across Europe. That encompasses
not only front-line personnel, such as Lazarus, but all those people who test the waters
or check that U.S. and host nation standards are being followed.
“In general,” said Lt. Col. Laurie Cummings of the U.S. Army Center for
Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine-Europe, “we have good water quality
here.”
Cummings heads the center’s environmental engineering division, a nonregulatory
organization that monitors water quality and provides technical assistance to base support
battalions and other entities. She acknowledges there are challenges — such as
adequate staffing — in the ongoing battle to maintain water quality, but she insists
they haven’t shaken anyone’s resolve. Besides its water surveillance and
monitoring duties, the staff keeps tabs on waste water, air quality, waste disposal and
soil contamination.
“I know of no area where a problem has been identified and there wasn’t
diligent action taken,” Cummings said of Army communities in Europe.
That sentiment was seconded time and again by others in the water field.
“I would say we have a very healthy and strong program for managing our
water,” said Dan Hayes, the environmental program manager for U.S. Naval Forces
Europe.
Quality control begins with the people who treat the water or run the systems that
allow faucets to flow. Folks like Lazarus provide routine checks at the local level, while
laboratories (the Army’s being the largest) conduct sophisticated tests to detect
many contaminants, such as lead and copper.
Lazarus and other bioenvironmental engineers in military communities across the theater
keep a close watch on the water you drink.
Lazarus devotes one morning every other week to traveling around Rhein-Main with his
testing and sampling equipment. Some of the places he visits are regular stops. Schools,
dining facilities and other common-use areas are checked at least once a month. Other
collection points are randomly chosen. Sites are distributed throughout the base so no
pocket goes unchecked.
Over the years, Lazarus’ work has taken him to some strange places. While
stationed at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, he ventured through a vaulted door at the base
of a mountain in the middle of a jungle. A staircase then descended 500 feet before he
could test water coming from an underground aquifer.
“It was like something they would make at Disney World,” Lazarus said.
With a clipboard, cooler and that pair of small equipment boxes, Lazarus visited six
collection points on base, including two apartment building laundry rooms, an office, an
aircraft watering hole, a hangar and the local child development center.
“Hey,” said Cindy Bonar, a receptionist at the child development center,
“it’s the water boy.”
Lazarus takes it all in stride, explaining that’s a common greeting that he and
his brethren often hear.
Upon entering the kitchen, he makes a beeline for the sink. As Lazarus runs through his
paces, school employee Lucyna Chodaba labors near the stove, baking banana bread and lemon
cupcakes.
The smell is wonderful, though minutes later Lazarus finds himself in a laundry room
with clothes piled high on two of the three dryers. The transition from cupcakes to
clothes is jarring, though Lazarus likes the mix.
“That’s the good thing about my job,” he said. “You do a little bit
of everything, and you get out of the office.”
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