A man's body was found floating in a water supply reservoir in Rochester, New York. While some residents might be losing sleep over the revelation, which says the man was floating in their water supply for a month, city officials are crowing about the quality of the water remaining unchanged.
The dead body found in the Rochester water supply was a missing person who had been in the water for just under a month. The body prompted officials to order a temporary boil water advisory.
Rochester Mayor Malik Evans said at a press conference that the body was discovered in the Highland Park Reservoir on Tuesday morning. Evans said the reservoir was "shut off and bypassed as part of the city's water distribution system" as soon as the body was discovered.
"Our testing has shown no issues," Evans said. "...Out of an abundance of caution, we have issued a boil water advisory. ... The reservoir will not be back in service until it has been drained and cleaned."
The man, 29-year-old Abdullahi Muya, a Rochester resident, was last seen alive on Feb. 18.
Their investigation found that his body had been in the water for nearly a month after he entered the gated area on Feb. 24.
"After entering the gated area, at approximately 6:30 a.m., Mr. Muya appears to have slid down the side of the reservoir, into the water, where he tragically died," police said. "There was no one else present at the time of Mr. Muya's death and there does not appear to be any criminal element to this investigation."
The mayor said the water quality tests ordered by the county "confirmed the safety of the water supply."
"Our own data collected in the weeks and months prior to that mirrored those findings," Evans said, saying he drank some of the city's water this morning. "As I have always touted, the quality of our water wins awards regularly. So our water was never in question."
The discovery of the body a month after Muya's death "obviously calls into question how could he have not been detected in the reservoir being there that long," Evans said, adding that it's a question "all of us are asking, me in particular."
"The bureau is patrolled regularly by city security and water bureau personnel," Evans said, adding that the site is filled with sensitive, high-tech equipment that regularly checks water quality, heat and other items that should, in theory, have been able to detect a disturbance. "And yet, we did not know that Mr. Muya had gotten into the area or that he had entered the water."
Water in the reservoir is 15 feet deep and Muya's body was found "well below the surface," Evans said, within the shadows of the north side of the reservoir. This could explain why he was not before seen, he said.
