The water in the pipe was never meant to be drunk

Some towns run two water systems: the treated one you drink from, and an
untreated, pressurised municipal irrigation system for lawns and gardens.
The second is cheaper because nobody treats the water.

In 2023 it made at least 13 Utah children ill with **Shiga toxin-producing
Escherichia coli O157:H7.**

Haemolytic uraemic syndrome is kidney failure, and in children it is the
complication that makes O157:H7 genuinely dangerous rather than merely awful.

The design assumption that failed

The system is safe on the understanding that its water goes onto soil and
nothing else. What arrives at a house, though, is **water, under pressure,
from a tap, provided by the town** — and on a hot day children run through
sprinklers and drink from hoses.

Twelve of thirteen were using it for something it was not for. That is not
twelve mistakes; it is a system whose safety depends on every resident, child
included, continuously remembering an invisible distinction.

**Municipal irrigation water systems are underrecognised possible sources of
waterborne illness** — including, presumably, by the people who live with one.

What is recommended, in two parts

**Educating residents of communities with these irrigation systems about the
risks of playing in or drinking untreated water, and improving management
and operations risk mitigation of these untreated water systems.**

Education is the part that addresses the twelve of thirteen — telling people,
repeatedly, that the outdoor tap is not the indoor tap.

"Management and operations risk mitigation" is the half that does not depend
on anyone remembering anything, and the outbreak is an argument for weighting
it more heavily. A safety measure that requires a six-year-old to distinguish
two identical-looking taps is a safety measure with a known failure rate.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR.