Chet Edwards For Congress

March 24, 2006
Local company opens water-testing lab

Waco Tribune Herald
By Mike Copeland | Tribune-Herald business editor

People wearing white laboratory coats were all over 316 Kelly Drive on Thursday morning. So many that one might have thought a Frankenstein movie was being shot.

But the men and women wearing the coats won't be screaming, “It's alive!” Instead, they'll be plotting to kill or keep out things that contaminate water supplies.
A local company, ACT-I, has opened a new lab to help protect the drinking water of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The lab also can serve cities, water supply companies or private industry, ACT-I officials announced during a ribbon-cutting Thursday attended by dozens of local leaders.

In about a year, “it will be one of less than two dozen certified laboratories in the U.S. capable of testing for both 'crypto' and the new more stringent EPA arsenic limits,” said Harold Rafuse, a managing director and co-owner of ACT-I, which stands for Advanced Concepts and Technologies International.

Crypto is short for cryptosporidium, an organism that can contaminate water supplies. It is highly resistant to chlorine and infected 400,000 people in Milwaukee in 1993.

The city of Waco has its own water-testing lab, but it is not certified by the Environmental Protection Agency to perform testing for cryptosporidium. So water samples have to be sent to a lab near Buffalo, N.Y., with which the city has a contract through September 2008. Down the road, that testing could be done at the new ACT-I laboratory.

But the city and ACT-I could collaborate on other projects in the meantime, said Ricky Garrett, Waco's utility director.

“We periodically do non-EPA-mandated work, trying to stay ahead of the curve on quality issues,” said Garrett. “We wouldn't hesitate to contract with them if the need arises. They have good, quality analysts.”

People wearing white laboratory coats were all over 316 Kelly Drive on Thursday morning. So many that one might have thought a Frankenstein movie was being shot.

But the men and women wearing the coats won't be screaming, “It's alive!” Instead, they'll be plotting to kill or keep out things that contaminate water supplies.
A local company, ACT-I, has opened a new lab to help protect the drinking water of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The lab also can serve cities, water supply companies or private industry, ACT-I officials announced during a ribbon-cutting Thursday attended by dozens of local leaders.

In about a year, “it will be one of less than two dozen certified laboratories in the U.S. capable of testing for both 'crypto' and the new more stringent EPA arsenic limits,” said Harold Rafuse, a managing director and co-owner of ACT-I, which stands for Advanced Concepts and Technologies International.

Crypto is short for cryptosporidium, an organism that can contaminate water supplies. It is highly resistant to chlorine and infected 400,000 people in Milwaukee in 1993.

The city of Waco has its own water-testing lab, but it is not certified by the Environmental Protection Agency to perform testing for cryptosporidium. So water samples have to be sent to a lab near Buffalo, N.Y., with which the city has a contract through September 2008. Down the road, that testing could be done at the new ACT-I laboratory.

But the city and ACT-I could collaborate on other projects in the meantime, said Ricky Garrett, Waco's utility director.

“We periodically do non-EPA-mandated work, trying to stay ahead of the curve on quality issues,” said Garrett. “We wouldn't hesitate to contract with them if the need arises. They have good, quality analysts.”