Jenks Businesses Suffer Losses During Weekend Boil Advisory

The water supply in Jenks is safe to drink again, after a boil advisory was issued late Friday.

The water tested positive for E. coli in a couple of tests, but follow up tests came back clean.

The folks at City Hall refused to talk Monday about the water problem that shut down every restaurant in town on a Friday night and for most of Saturday. About all they'll say is that routine testing uncovered the problem, and that there's no problem now.

The restaurants are back open, after a weekend when they were forced to close, and couldn't reopen until everything was sanitized.

The boil advisory that shut down restaurants came after two positive tests for E. coli, from a single testing site in the city.

While everyone was urged to not drink the water, restaurants had to meet a higher standard.

8/10/2013 Related Story: Residents React As Boil Order Lifted For Jenks

At Napoli's Italian Restaurant, that meant the cost of losing a day and a half of business, the expense of an extra top-to-bottom cleaning, and slow times as customers return.

"Most of the customers we had yesterday, and it was slow. Today's been slow, as well, but most of the customers were ones who had been out of town," said Shellie Fore.

The City of Tulsa sells water to the City of Jenks, which distributes it throughout the city. For testing, Jenks takes the samples, and sends them to the lab at the City of Tulsa. They report positive results to the Department of Environmental Quality, and from there, county health departments will order restaurants to close.

"A lot of public health is preventative, and that's one reason the state and federal government have procedures in place, because it only takes one person getting sick or one person dying," said Debbie Watts, of the Tulsa Health Department.

In this case, the health department is not aware of anyone becoming ill.

"We have not received any notification and our epidemiologist hasn't either, but the symptoms could take up to a week," Watts said.

The city takes 30 samples a month and that's how the problem was discovered.

They take them from outside faucets and there's the possibility the faucet was contaminated and not the water that came out of it.

Regardless, the tests are clear now.