Marathon City’s new fluoridation system, which was started in 2022 with help from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), is in jeopardy of being discontinued due to difficulties in heating the water used to dissolve fluoride tablets.

For over a year now, village officials have been trying to find a method of heating its water to a point where the fluoride tables dissolve evenly over time, creating a steady concentration of the chemical in the village’s drinking supply. However, they have not been able to find a system that meets with DNR approval and effectively dissolves the tablets.

At the Jan. 31 meeting of the Marathon City Utility Commission, utilities superintendent Ken Bloom told commissioners that he has working with engineers at Strand Associates to find a heat exchanger that will work well, but he’s “not real optimistic.”

“One of my concerns is just trying to keep the water temperature stable, because if it gets too warm, we’re going to dissolve more of the tablet,” he said. “If it gets too cold, we don’t dissolve enough of the tablet. Then we get into the predicament where the concentration fluctuates.”

In May of 2022, the commission agreed to be part of pilot study, paid for by the Wisconsin DHS, to switch to water-soluble tablets for fluoridating the village’s water. This replaced the practice of adding fluorosilicic acid to the water, which was considered potentially dangerous due to the possibility of the acid accidentally spilling and mixing with chlorine, which was stored in the same building.

Even though the state paid to install a $15,000 platform and feeder system (made by KC Industries in Florida) at the water plant for distributing the tablets, Bloom said he’s not sure how much money the village has spent at this point trying to make the system work.

“If we can’t find something, we need to make a decision if we’re going to keep dumping money into it or what we’re going to do,” he told commissioners.

In the future, Bloom said the utility could save “quite a bit of money” by not having to pay someone to come in on the weekends to deal with the fluoridation process, but before that can happen, he said the village needs to show that fluoride levels are not fluctuating constantly. Right now, he said the utility spends about $19,000 per year on weekend overtime hours, and it could save between $11,000 and $14,000 by switching to on-call pay.

At this point, Bloom said the utility could switch back to using fluorosilicic acid, but that would need to be stored in a separate place from the chlorine used at the water plant. Otherwise, he said the village could decide to stop fluoridating its water.

When the commission was deciding whether to switch to the tablets in 2022, local dentist Dr. Noelle Marks strongly supported the continued fluoridation of water as a way of preventing cavities.

Commissioner Bruce Bohr expressed disbelief that the manufacturer of the fluoride feeder system cannot come up with a way to address what seems to be a “simple problem.” He said he would like to get a response back from the company at the commission’s next meeting and possibly get the village attorney involved.

“If they’re not going to solve it, we should get our money back and then some,” he said.

Village administrator Steve Cherek said he’s talked to the manufacturer about reimbursing the village for money it spent with Strand Associates, but the priority is to get the DNR to sign off on a water heating that meets health and safety standards.

“If we can’t get through the DNR approval, we’re not going to get anywhere,” Cherek said.