Editor’s note: This story has been updated March 11 to clarify the testing results for one of the homes.

Cahokia Heights residents have found E. coli in their drinking water through community-organized testing of samples from kitchen taps. The results raise new questions about infrastructure in a community plagued by sewage spills and flooding.

The findings contradict test results from the city’s two water providers — private company Illinois American Water and the city of Cahokia Heights — whose own sampling outside homes has not detected E. coli in treated drinking water, according to public records from the past 15 years.

The difference between what residents are finding at their faucets and what utilities are reporting has intensified longstanding worries about water quality, public health and whether state and federal regulators are doing enough to protect the community.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required increased water monitoring in both water systems over concerns about contamination until three years ago, when it released Illinois American Water from the mandate.

Illinois American provides water to residents in the former Centreville, where residents say sewage backups have been happening for decades. Infrastructure problems cause sewage to spill from pipes and flood into streets, yards and homes during heavy rain.

Residents organized to advocate for solutions through the group Centreville Citizens for Change before Centreville, Alorton and Cahokia merged in 2021 to become Cahokia Heights.

Representatives from Illinois American Water and the city declined interview requests about the community testing results, instead providing statements that said their water meets regulatory standards. The statements encouraged residents to contact them with any concerns about their water.

Residents say the findings from testing the taps inside their homes validate concerns they have been raising for years. It brought mixed feelings for longtime resident Yvette Lyles, 67, who believes the drinking water has made her sick multiple times.

“It was joy and extreme sadness at the same time,” she said. “We’ve been saying this for years — not only me, but the other residents in the community have been complaining about this for years, and then we finally get this pertinent, serious information to support us. And it hurts because we already knew it.

“The only way they can correct this is by doing right by our community and giving us safe water that not only is safe in their plant, but making sure it’s safe as it’s going from their plants to reach residents’ homes,” Lyles added.

Lawyers Nicole Nelson, Kalila Jackson and Kennedy Moehrs Gardner and community organizer Maliaka Hill from the nonprofit Equity Legal Services led the water testing program with resident participants and volunteers. Lawyers from the organization also represent Cahokia Heights residents in federal litigation against city officials seeking infrastructure fixes and compensation for their property damage.

They announced the water testing results in early March.

Their data showed a total of 118 water samples were collected from 23 homes over seven months, from June to December.

Of those samples, 26 tested positive for total coliforms, a group of bacteria common in the environment. Regulators say they are generally not harmful, but their presence signals a potential problem with equipment or treatment systems. It requires additional testing under state and federal regulations to check for E. coli bacteria, which is an indication that water may be contaminated with feces.

E. coli was detected in eight of the community water samples.

Six of the community’s eight E. coli-positive samples came from the same home in the former city of Centreville.

Gardner said most of the homes that were involved in the testing get their water from Illinois American Water. She confirmed that their testing detected E. coli in the water of both Illinois American’s and the city’s water customers.

Water samples collected by Illinois American Water and the city in the same time period as the community testing found total coliforms once in Illinois American’s system: a sample collected in August. The city’s last total coliform-positive result was collected in May, just before the community water testing began.

The community testing also measured chlorine, a common disinfectant utilities use to kill germs as the water travels through pipes to homes. Some kitchen tap water did not meet the minimum state standards to be effective, according to their data.

Nine of the 23 homes had average chlorine levels below the state’s regulatory standard of 1.0 milligram per liter when they first turned on their taps to collect samples.

Homes generally had more chlorine in the water after flushing their system by running the tap for five minutes, which draws fresh water from the water main into the home’s pipes. But three homes still had average chlorine levels below state standards even after flushing.

“What that means is that there are opportunities for contamination,” Jackson said of low chlorination.

Residents seek utility, regulator action

Illinois American Water and the city declined requests for an interview through company spokeswoman Sarah Kramer and city attorney Erica Spitzig.

Illinois American said in a statement that it treats and delivers water that meets standards set by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Kramer also said the company would like to conduct its own tests at the specific locations of positive community test results.

Cahokia Heights said in a statement that it investigated, along with the Illinois EPA, when Equity Legal Services reached out about a community water sample testing positive for total coliforms in June. Neither the city nor the Illinois EPA’s follow-up testing found total coliforms.

“The city is concerned about the health and well-being of its citizens, and encourages residents to contact the city at any time if they have concerns,” Cahokia Heights stated.

The city added that its water testing has shown chlorine within the required limits and no total coliform positive results in the time since.

The Equity Legal Services lawyers criticized follow-up testing by both Cahokia Heights and Illinois American, which they described as delayed, happening several days after residents or the legal team told them about results from the community testing.

“If they’re coming out days later, that’s not going to be the same water that’s going through the system as what we were testing,” Gardner said. “So a negative result on a different day doesn’t mean that the contamination was not present when we originally took it.”

They said Equity Legal Services plans to share the data with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and call for regulatory action in response to the findings.

Kim Biggs, the Illinois EPA spokeswoman, said she was not aware of the testing or results from it and did not respond to multiple requests for further comment before press time.

The community water testing project comes after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2023 terminated an administrative order requiring increased water monitoring in Illinois American Water’s system. The federal agency issued the order in 2021 over concerns that sewage on the ground could contaminate the system if water pipes lost pressure from a leak or break.

The federal agency released Illinois American from the extra monitoring after determining that it met the terms of the order. The city of Cahokia Heights remains under the EPA administrative order for water monitoring while work on its drinking water infrastructure is ongoing, according to Spitzig, the city attorney.

‘We knew something was wrong’

Like many other residents, Lyles keeps stacks of bottled water on hand in the kitchen for drinking and cooking because she does not trust the tap water.

At least 80 households in the former Centreville are signed up to receive donated bottled water through ongoing community water drives, according to Hill, Equity Legal Services’ community organizer.

Lyles said her distrust comes from being diagnosed with a bacterial infection from Helicobacter pylori as many as five times in the 32 years she has lived in her Cahokia Heights home.

H. pylori is thought to spread through contact with feces or contaminated food or water. It infects the stomach after it is ingested. In severe infections, it can cause ulcers. Some research has also linked long-term H. pylori infection to a higher risk of developing gastrointestinal cancer.

An ongoing health study, separate from the community water testing, is tracking H. pylori infections and intestinal inflammation among Cahokia Heights residents. The research is led by Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

Researchers want to understand how flooding with sewage-contaminated water might be affecting the residents’ health.

They found about 30 active H. pylori infections in 2022 and 2023 with sample sizes between 42 and 52 adults and some overlap in participants each year.

Lyles said she was hospitalized in 2018 for symptoms from H. pylori and recently had surgery because of another infection from the bacteria.

“I’m tired of it,” Lyles said. Now, she says she washes her face with bottled water to avoid tap water touching her skin and eyes. She already used bottled water to brush her teeth, and she does not consume the tap water.

Lyles participated in the community water testing and said samples from her kitchen sink tested positive for total coliforms in July and generally had low chlorine levels. She said she did not share the information with her water provider, Illinois American, because she has not been satisfied with their responses to her concerns in the past. She said she does not trust the company.

Another community water testing participant, Patricia Greenwood, 76, said her tap water tested positive for E. coli six times. She is also an Illinois American Water customer and said she is unhappy with the service.

“They do a piss poor job, and I don’t like it,” she said of the water company. “They can come live in this house, and I’ll go live in their house. They can experience what we’re experiencing firsthand.”

Arianna Norris-Landry, 64, said she has been bathing with bottled or boiled water since samples collected from her kitchen sink tested positive for total coliforms at least once during the community testing.

Norris-Landry moved to Cahokia Heights a decade ago. After a few years, she said she noticed her hair was thinning and that she had started developing rashes on her arms. She now believes it is from drinking and bathing in the water.

She estimated she spends $40 to $50 every two weeks purchasing cases of water.

“I’m supposed to be retired,” Norris-Landry said. “I go to work because I like to eat, and now we have to buy water, and I’m sorry, but they’re wrong; I can’t live on $1,300 a month from my Social Security.”

Resident Sharon Smith, 64, said she also relies on bottled water. She has not felt comfortable drinking her tap water in years. If she does drink water from her tap, she says her stomach hurts afterward.

“It tasted funny, so we knew something was wrong with the water,” Smith said.

Another resident, Jeanette Green, 65, said her water tastes “terrible” and smells like strong chlorine and bleach. Green noted her bill from Illinois American is around $70 a month for water she is not comfortable consuming or bathing with.

“I don’t want to keep on paying for bad water,” Green said. “Why am I paying at all if the water is contaminated?”

Resident William McNeal, 74, said he is also tired of paying for water he does not drink, instead relying on bottled water.

As he spoke about the issue in his home last week, he was running his kitchen tap into a plastic pitcher. The water had a brown tint to it.

Community organizes water testing

The community testing involved residents and volunteers from the Sierra Club and the NAACP East St. Louis chapter.

They all followed the same protocols that water providers follow, according to Jackson.

Residents disinfected their sinks and faucets and applied hand sanitizer and gloves before collection. Volunteers filled out a chain-of-custody form documenting the sample from collection to laboratory delivery.

They visited 10 homes at around the same time of day for regular sampling. And they followed up within 24 hours of a positive total coliform result with additional testing at that home, plus two neighbors within five service connections of the original home, one upstream and one downstream. (Those neighbors brought the total number of households participating in testing to 23.)

They collected two sets of samples for total coliform and E. coli testing at each home. One went to an Illinois EPA-certified laboratory for testing. The other was tested in-house at Equity Legal Service’s office so that residents could be involved in the process of investigating their water quality, according to Nelson.

“We wanted this to be community led, which means they are also participating,” Nelson said.

They counted a sample as positive if one or both of the labs detected total coliforms or E. coli.

Elin Warn Betanzo, a former U.S. EPA employee who played a role in uncovering the Flint water crisis, provided technical support for the community water testing in Cahokia Heights.

Back in 2015, Betanzo convinced her friend, a Flint pediatrician, to conduct a study that discovered elevated lead levels in children.

Today, Betanzo is an engineer and water consultant. And she is urging water providers in Cahokia Heights to investigate their systems based on the community’s findings. E. coli in drinking water is an “immediate, urgent public health concern,” she said.

“I think we need to believe the E. coli results,” Betanzo said. “We found it more than once. It was not a fluke. There was repeat samples in multiple locations, and that is a problem.

“I helped uncover the Flint water crisis, and we had more than enough data there to prove that the water wasn’t safe, but the authorities still dismissed us, and then we had to prove that children were being harmed for the authorities to finally recognize us and take action,” Betanzo added. “In this case, I really hope we’re past that.”

The grant-funded work cost $12,000, which covered the needed supplies and the cost of testing but did not include operational or labor costs, Nelson noted. She said Equity Legal Services and volunteers donated their time.

Nelson added that the grant also paid for a year’s worth of bottled water donations for residents, and in the future, it will cover the installation of home water filtration systems.

Robin Carey-Boyd, president of the NAACP East St. Louis chapter, said her organization is also donating to Cahokia Heights, with a goal to collect at least 400 cases of water by March 12 for residents who have water concerns.

Equity Legal Services plans to collect another six months of water quality data in the community. Additional testing started in February.

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