A small rural drinking water treatment plant at dusk, with circular concrete clarifier basins, galvanised handrails and a low pump house.

Drinking water and wastewater compliance · Kansas City, Missouri

The clock starts at the tap.Not at our loading dock.

A coliform result is worthless if the sample reached the bench thirty-one hours after it was drawn, and the operator who drew it usually finds that out three weeks later, in a letter. Everything on this page is organised by the window that governs it.

How to submit a sample

Why this page is a clock

Every fact about this laboratory is downstream of one number.

A laboratory does not sell analysis. It sells a result that survives a state audit, and a result only survives if the sample was drawn into the right container, held at the right temperature, and started on the bench inside the hold time written into the method. Miss the window and the analysis still runs, still costs money, and is invalid. The system resamples. The clock starts again.

So the hold time decides the courier schedule, the cut-off hour, the amount of ice in the chest, the bottle, the preservative and the price. It is the only honest way to organise what we do, and it is the one thing a small system operator actually needs from us before they pick up the telephone.

What follows is the whole menu, arranged from the analyses that cannot leave the site at all through to the ones that will still be good in December. Each band says what dies at its boundary.

The schedule

Six windows, from fifteen minutes to six months.

15 minutes

These four cannot be sent to us at all, and any laboratory that offers to run them is selling you a number.

pH drifts as dissolved carbon dioxide leaves the bottle. Free chlorine is gone before the truck reaches the county line. Temperature is meaningless once the sample is in a cooler. These are analyse immediately parameters, which in practice means a calibrated field meter in the operator's hand at the sample tap. What we sell here is not analysis, it is the calibration and the annual verification that makes the operator's own reading defensible.

Performed by the system operator at the point of collection. Prices are for meter service, not for analysis.
Parameter	Method	Container	Preservative	Fee
pH	SM 4500-H B	Field meter	None	$95 / yr verification
Free chlorine residual	SM 4500-Cl G	Field colorimeter	None	$95 / yr verification
Temperature	SM 2550 B	Field probe	None	Included
Dissolved oxygen	SM 4500-O G	Field probe	None	$140 / yr verification

30 hours

The coliform window, and the reason this laboratory owns a van.

For routine drinking water compliance the sample must be under analysis, not merely delivered, within thirty hours of collection, and held below 10 °C on the way. Thirty hours sounds generous until you count backwards through a Friday. A system that draws at nine on Friday morning is at hour twenty-seven by noon on Saturday, which is why our Saturday bench runs at all and why the courier route below is built the way it is.

Bottles arrive from us pre-sterilised and containing sodium thiosulfate, which quenches the chlorine so the disinfectant does not keep killing organisms in transit. Do not rinse the bottle. Rinsing removes the thiosulfate and the result comes back absent when it should not.

Held below 10 °C in transit. Samples arriving past the window are reported as invalidated and are not billed.
Analysis	Method	Container	Preservative	Fee
Total coliform, presence/absence	SM 9223 B	100 mL sterile	Na thiosulfate	$22
E. coli confirmation	SM 9223 B	Same bottle	Na thiosulfate	$12
Heterotrophic plate count	SM 9215 B	100 mL sterile	Na thiosulfate	$34
Coliform, quantified (MPN)	SM 9223 B	100 mL sterile	Na thiosulfate	$38
Repeat set after a positive	SM 9223 B	4 × 100 mL	Na thiosulfate	$76 the set

48 hours

Two days, and turbidity has to be kept in the dark.

Turbidity is a physical measurement and it changes as particles settle or as algae grow, so the bottle travels in a closed cooler rather than on a truck seat. Nitrite converts to nitrate given warmth and time, which is why it carries a shorter window than its own parent. Nitrate itself gets forty-eight hours only if the water is unchlorinated; chlorinated systems get twenty-eight days, which is the single most commonly confused hold time in this business and the reason it appears in two bands on this page.

Cooled to 6 °C or below on collection. Turbidity bottles ship in an opaque sleeve.
Analysis	Method	Container	Preservative	Fee
Turbidity	EPA 180.1	250 mL amber	Cool, dark	$18
Nitrite as N	EPA 300.0	250 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$26
Nitrate as N, unchlorinated	EPA 300.0	250 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$26
Orthophosphate	EPA 300.0	250 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$30

14 days

The by-products of your own disinfection, and the vials that must not hold a bubble.

Trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids form continuously in the distribution system, so the bottle carries an acid and a quenching agent to stop the reaction at the moment of collection. Volatile organics travel in three 40 mL vials filled to a convex meniscus with no headspace at all: a single bubble the size of a pinhead is grounds for rejection, because the analyte partitions into it. Invert the capped vial and tap it. If anything moves, draw it again.

All preserved on collection. Vials are supplied pre-charged with acid, so do not overfill and do not tip them out.
Analysis	Method	Container	Preservative	Fee
Total trihalomethanes	EPA 524.2	3 × 40 mL vial	Ascorbic acid, HCl	$88
Haloacetic acids (HAA5)	EPA 552.3	250 mL amber	Ammonium chloride	$130
Volatile organics, full list	EPA 524.2	3 × 40 mL vial	HCl to pH < 2	$185
Total alkalinity	SM 2320 B	250 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$22

28 days

Four weeks, which is long enough to stop thinking about the courier.

Anions are stable once cool, so this band is the comfortable one and it is where most of the annual monitoring schedule sits. Nitrate belongs here if the system is chlorinated, because the residual suppresses the bacteria that would otherwise reduce it. Two systems on the same road can therefore have different hold times for the same parameter, which is exactly the sort of thing that goes wrong quietly. If you are not certain which applies, say so on the chain of custody and we will treat it as forty-eight hours.

Cooled on collection. Bundle pricing applies when four or more are drawn from one tap.
Analysis	Method	Container	Preservative	Fee
Nitrate as N, chlorinated	EPA 300.0	250 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$26
Sulfate	EPA 300.0	250 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$24
Chloride	EPA 300.0	250 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$24
Fluoride	SM 4500-F C	250 mL poly	None	$26
Anion suite, all four	EPA 300.0	500 mL poly	Cool 6 °C	$78

6 months

Acidified metals keep until summer, and the bottle is the whole method.

Nitric acid to below pH 2 holds the metals in solution instead of letting them plate onto the container wall, and once that is done the sample is stable for half a year. The failure in this band is almost never the hold time. It is the sampling: lead and copper compliance requires a first draw after six hours of stagnation, collected by the resident, from a tap they actually drink from, and a household that runs the shower first has produced a clean number that means nothing. We supply the bottle with the instruction sheet attached to it for that reason.

Preserved bottles are supplied charged with acid. Do not rinse and do not fill past the shoulder.
Analysis	Method	Container	Preservative	Fee
Lead and copper, first draw	EPA 200.8	1 L poly, wide mouth	HNO₃ to pH < 2	$44 the pair
Arsenic	EPA 200.8	250 mL poly	HNO₃ to pH < 2	$42
Iron and manganese	EPA 200.7	250 mL poly	HNO₃ to pH < 2	$38 the pair
Total hardness, as CaCO₃	SM 2340 B	250 mL poly	HNO₃ to pH < 2	$22
Gross alpha and beta	EPA 900.0	1 L poly	HNO₃ to pH < 2	$165

Submission

Five steps, and the fourth is the one that gets samples rejected.

Nothing here requires an account, a portal or a quotation. Systems in Clay, Clinton, Ray, Platte and Caldwell counties are on a standing route; everyone else brings it to the door or ships it overnight on ice.

01Ask for bottles before you need them.

They arrive sterilised, pre-charged with the right preservative and labelled with the analysis they belong to. A clean jar from the shop is not a sample container and will be refused. Bottles are free and there is no charge for the courier that brings them.

02Draw the sample the way the method requires.

Flush the line unless the method says otherwise, and for lead and copper do the opposite: first draw, after six hours standing. Do not rinse a bottle that came with something already in it.

03Ice it immediately, and mean it.

Wet ice or frozen gel packs in contact with the bottles, not a cool bag in a warm truck. A cooler arriving above 10 °C is recorded on the report as a deviation whether or not you mention it, because the temperature blank tells us.

04Fill in the chain of custody, including the time.

This is the step that fails. A chain of custody with the date but no collection time cannot be shown to have met any hold time at all, and a state reviewer will treat it as an invalid sample even though the analysis was perfect. Time of collection, in hours and minutes, on every line.

05Get it to us inside the shortest window in the cooler.

A cooler holding a coliform bottle and a metals bottle is governed by the coliform. Thirty hours, not six months. If you cannot make it, ring and we will meet the van rather than let you drive a sample that is already dead.

Certification

The certificate numbers, because a laboratory that will not print them is asking you to guess.

Micro, drinking water: Missouri DNR certifiedCertificate 00000-MB. Total coliform, E. coli, HPC. Renewed annually, on-site audit every third year.
Chemistry, drinking water: Missouri DNR certifiedCertificate 00000-CH. Anions, metals, disinfection by-products, volatile organics.
Wastewater: Missouri DNR certifiedCertificate 00000-WW. BOD, TSS, ammonia, total phosphorus, E. coli.
Proficiency testing: Two rounds a year, every analyteResults are supplied to any client who asks, including the failures. There have been two in nine years and both are on the sheet.
Scope on request: One page, current, datedSent as a PDF the same day. If a laboratory needs a week to produce its own scope, that is the answer to your question.

A laboratory bench with a membrane filtration manifold, stacked petri dishes and a pipettor, under fluorescent light. — The micro bench. Membrane filtration on the left, and the reason the Saturday shift exists sitting in the cooler by the door.

A stack of laboratory incubators with glass doors, a temperature dial and a chart recorder on the side. — Both incubators are on a chart recorder and a battery backed alarm. A drift of two degrees overnight invalidates every plate in the cabinet, and the audit asks to see the traces.

30 h: The coliform window, and the only number on this page that decides whether the rest of it matters.
6: Courier runs a week, including Saturday morning, which exists solely so Friday sampling is possible.
1,140: Compliance samples analysed last year for 34 public water systems, the smallest of them serving 61 people.
2 of 9: Proficiency rounds failed in nine years, both on the same analyte, both corrected and both on the sheet we send you.

The route

Where the van is, on which morning.

Coolers are collected from the plant, not from a drop box. If your system is not on the route, overnight shipping on wet ice works for everything except the thirty hour band, which needs the van or your own truck.

A wire rack of sterile plastic sample bottles with white screw caps and blank labels, condensation on the outside, on a stainless steel counter. — Bottles go out full of nothing but the preservative. Rinsing one is the most common reason a result comes back wrong.

An open hard sided sample cooler on a pickup tailgate, packed with bagged ice and upright plastic sample bottles, with a clipboard beside it. — Monday and Thursday: Clay and Platte. Tuesday and Friday: Clinton and Caldwell. Wednesday: Ray, out as far as Richmond. Saturday: a short run for anything drawn on Friday, back on the bench by ten.

The same small water treatment plant at dusk, seen wider, with its clarifier basins and pump house.

Ring before you draw, not after.

Laboratory

(816) 555-0118

814 East 16th Street
Kansas City, Missouri

Sample receiving

Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Coolers after hours by arrangement, never left at the door.

Reporting

Micro results the morning after analysis.
Chemistry within five working days.
Any exceedance telephoned before it is emailed.

Bottles

Ordered by telephone, free, on the next scheduled run for your county.