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On Dec. 23, 1983, an alert was sent to many Luzerne County residents: The water was not safe to drink. A microscopic organism, the giardia cyst, had contaminated what was believed to have been a pristine water supply. To kill the cyst, water coming from the tap had to be boiled before it was consumed.
More than 250,000 people were affected. Bottled water sales skyrocketed, as did the sale of home water filtration systems.
Before that, hundreds of people came down with giardiasis, an intestinal illness that causes prolonged diarrhea, nausea, cramps and weakness.
The local water at that time was supplied by a locally owned company, Pennsylvania Gas and Water Co. The giardia-infected water supply was traced to the seepage of sewage into the Spring Brook Reservoir in Lackawanna County.
This photo was taken on Jan. 17, 1984, and appeared in print shortly after. It shows Kingston resident, Nancy Dietterick, holding a bottle of dirty water at her home. Dietterick could not wash dishes until the water was clean.
An outbreak of giardiasis struck Luzerne County in 1983 and lasted through the summer of 1984. According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, 15 individual and six class action lawsuits were outstanding as of 1987.
