Would you drink this water? Iowa DNR says it’s safe.

The drinking water in Mitchellville may turn red and it sometimes smells like sulfur, but the Iowa Department of Natural Resources said residents can still drink it.

"Just because the water might have an unusual odor to it or it's cloudy, it isn't always an indicator that it's got something bad," DNR supervisor Ted Petersen said. "Sometimes, it does have a little bit of discoloration or a little bit of odor, but it's typically not harmful to drink. That part has been a little hard to understand."

Mitchellville resident Trisha Doorenbos Richey is one of several people around town who can't stomach the water. She posted a picture of the reddish-yellow substance coming from her faucet last week on Facebook and wondered why her water rates had been raised if her water is still off-colored.

"This is the worst that I've ever seen it," Richey said later. "It was everywhere. The water in the kitchen was bad, and the water in the toilet was really gross — it looked like someone dumped kitty litter in my toilet. It was gray."

She tried to take a shower one morning last week, but said she didn't feel clean when she got out.

"This has been a continuous issue the whole time we've lived here for 11 years," Richey said. "It's not every day that it's brown like that. There are days it runs semi-clear, but it still has stuff floating in it."

Petersen said his office has received complaints about Mitchellville's water over the years and said last week's issues were due to something happening in the city's filter system that resulted in the water continuing to re-flush, which caused buildup in the pipes to get stirred into the water.

"This has occurred several times in the last several years," Petersen said. "We don't always know exactly what the trigger is, but it's not uncommon when a lot of water is pulled through the pipe at one time."

Still, the discolored smelly water left many Mitchellville residents wondering why there wasn't a boil order issued.

Petersen said boiling orders aren't always issued, and in this case, boiling the water could have made it worse. When there are nitrates in the water, boiling them can make them more concentrated, he said. Boiling is only recommended to kill bacteria.

Mitchellville's water is safe to drink, Petersen said, and the DNR "has found nothing in its data that suggests Mitchellville should be doing anything differently with its water."

Mitchellville has an operations permit, which requires the city to sample its water regularly for different parameters including bacterial testing. He said the city has to gather samples of water from various spots around town in order to get a good representation of the entire system.

Even if the only thing wrong with the water is how it looks, Richey has spent more than a decade trying to figure out why her water doesn't seem right.

About two-and-a-half years ago, her husband put in a new water heater. When he did that, he replaced all of the plumbing inside their house and installed plastic pipes.

"The original thing the city council told us when I went to my very first meeting was there are old pipes in the house and they're rusty," Richey said. "These plastic pipes are not corrosive, so that's not the issue. They have a different excuse each time I go."

Richey said she moved to town from a home in the rural party of the county, where her family had well water — and the "well water was better than what we have here.

"I don't even give this water to my dogs if that tells you anything."

Joe Crook sat on the Mitchellville City Council for a term and heard some of Richey's complaints.

He served as a police officer on the Mitchellville Police Department for more than 30 years before his job on the council.

Crook agreed that the city's water issues started about a decade ago.

A few years ago, he said, the city sent divers into the water tower to clean out some stuff at the bottom. He claims that didn't help much, because the problem is bigger than that.

About 10 years ago, Mitchellville dug two new deep wells just east of town. The city went so far over budget on that project, he said, they had to skip installing a $500,000 water softener.

"The best service the city could do for the water users is put in a water softener because that would impact every water user in the city," Crook said.

He also agreed with Petersen, the DNR supervisor, that the red color likely comes from rusty pipes.

The city is slowly replacing its pipes, starting on Fourth Street Northwest. Mitchellville will replace the pipes between Center Avenue and Cotton Avenue while repaving a street that leads to the elementary school.

That fix won't stop Crook from having to purchase $6 five-gallon jugs of water for his water cooler, though. He still doesn't trust the water that's coming out of his faucet.

"I don't drink the water," Crook said. "The stuff is hard as a rock. You take dishes out of the dishwater and there's spots all over them."

Richey won't drink the water, either.

"We even use bottled water to cook with," she said.

Petersen said when residents have complaints, their first phone call should be to the city.

"I would always recommend they call their city operator," Petersen said. "They're more in tune with the situation at hand. And then if they feel like they have more questions, give our department a call."