SALISBURY — Starting on July 1, Salisbury-Rowan Utilities will no longer offer bacteriological testing services for people who are not on the department’s water system.

SRU Assistant Utilities Director Jim Amaral said that the organization had made the decision to end the service for private well water users for a multitude of reasons, including that the service was operating at a loss, that it was atypical among municipalities throughout the state, that it tied up staff hours that could be spent on SRU customers and that it provided an extra risk to SRU.

“This is a service that you don’t see local governments performing much, but we’ve continued to do this. There are private companies that do the testing and as SRU looks at their limited resources amid a growing system, they’re looking at making sure we still provide our quality, core services,” said City Manager Jim Greene Jr.

SRU has its own laboratory that was being used to perform the testing, also known as Bac-T testing, and Amaral said that the private testing could and has endangered their “reputation and certification.” The lab is required to follow same-day reporting regulations, and if a customer provides inaccurate or incomplete information, the lab runs afoul of those.

Bac-T testing identifies any potential coliform, or E-coli, bacteria in water, and SRU is required to perform the testing on its own systems. The service being canceled was offered to private well water users who are not a part of the SRU system, typically businesses, developers and builders. 

“We are also seeing a lot of customers that aren’t in Rowan County. Some are coming from Lexington, Concord, Mooresville, just because they can get a quick turnaround on these samples and it’s at a very low cost,” said Amaral.

Amaral said that the additional service began in 2008 with the aim of increasing revenue, but it has recently operated at a loss.

Council Member Harry McLaughlin said that he wanted to make sure that the city was not canceling a service needed by economically-disadvantaged residents. Amaral said that the city offered the service for $60, while nearby private labs ranged from $70 to $90, so the change in costs was not too significant.

SRU will be reaching out to each of the 74 regular users of the service and notifying them “well in advance” that the department would be ending their testing. Amaral stated that they had also identified nine labs within an hour of Salisbury that offered Bac-T testing, many of whom also offered mailing kits.