CENTERVILLE—To comply with a new state law banning municipalities from adding fluoride to their culinary water systems, Centerville City has shut down its fluoride injection equipment. That took place on May 6; city wells began distributing non-fluoridated water at midnight on May 7. The city had been fluoridating its water since September 2001.

HB81, which was signed by Gov. Spencer J. Cox on March 27, was sponsored by Rep. Stephanie Gricius R-Eagle Mountain and Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, the senate majority leader. Cullimore agreed to run the bill in response to water conservancy districts’ concerns about toxic exposure to the mineral when mishandled, he said.

Although the city has begun the process of dismantling the fluoridation equipment, a process it is required to document for the state, Public Works Director Mike Carlson plans to leave the fluoride in the adjacent tanks for the time being at the six well sites. In addition to that fluoride, the city has 714 gallons of left over fluoride which it now needs to dispose of.

“We need to set up a protocol for whenever we deal with fluoride,” Carlson told Mayor Clark Wilkinson and the city council at a May 6 council work session. “Our policies that we have in the city is we have to identify a safe way of dealing with the fluoride. So in our development of the policy, we never thought we were taking it out, so we didn't develop anything.”

Eventually the city will hire a company to vacuum out the tanks and haul the fluoride off to the West Desert to be treated. That process could take six to seven years, and they have budgeted $35,000 a year, the amount originally carved out for fluoridation, for it.

“We'll do it as cheap as we can,” Carlson said. “I'm not in a hurry to rush and do it. Let's let other places get the brunt of it, so to speak, taken care of, and then maybe we get a little bit better pricing.”

They are also going to store any usable equipment in case sometime in the future they're required to put another chemical into the system, Carlson said.

“We don't want to just take equipment that has been working and just get rid of it,” he said. “… So we'll be evaluating as we go through what we’re going to keep and what we’re going to dispose of.”

City officials are also trying to decide what to do with the Church Well fill station at 200 East 200 South. 

“The reason why the Church Well fill station was brought into effect was because people didn’t want fluoridated water,” Carlson said. “With the fluoride no longer going into the taps, it’s going to be the same water as the well produces. So our Centerville residents will have exactly the same water.”

Carlson said he would like to see the fill  station be maintained for emergency use in the future.

“So we go along; our crews keep testing, making sure that it’s working. And then when we have that disaster, we have a place for our residents to come and fill up and get water during that crisis time,” he said.

The city council will discuss options for the fill station at a future work session.