Almost a year to the day after the expiration of the Indian Hills General Improvement District's exemption from reducing the arsenic in its drinking water a purer source has been secured.
The district was not the only one in trouble from the federal government's reduction of the maximum arsenic in the water from 50 parts per billion to 10. But it was one of the larger water purveyors in the state who sought an exemption.
Once the exemption was gone, the district faced sanctions from state and federal officials for the 16 parts per billion of arsenic in its water.
We appreciate what a major step it was for the district to choose the pipeline from Minden over building its own treatment plant.
There's no evidence that a treatment plant would cost more or less than the pipeline to build. But in the long run it would cost the district more to operate its own plant, which would also only deal with a single contaminant, arsenic. If the feds decided there was some other contaminant that required treatment, that would need its own treatment process.
We recognize that Indian Hills had to give up a measure of its independence in order to solve the problem. That's a big step in Douglas County, where improvement districts offer a major form of home rule.
