CBRN event in United States of America on Thu 7th May 2026

MALDEN, Mo. (KFVS) - Last week, a malfunctioning pump dumped a large dose of chlorine into the water system in Malden, Missouri all at once instead of releasing it gradually as designed. Mayor Denton Kooyman said the city worked quickly to fix the pump and flush the water system. “We flushed the system as soon as we found out, ran all the fire hydrants, drained the system, did tests, and it was fixed by that afternoon,” Kooyman said. A local resident said the water system has been a problem since he moved to Malden last year, and the recent chlorine overfeed has heightened his concerns. “It doesn’t make you feel too good about where you’re living, you know, because it’s affecting you too,” the resident said. “You know if you’re drinking the water, taking baths in the water, you know it’s getting in your system.” Kooyman said other than reports of a strong chlorine odor and clothes that became faded in washing machines, no one was harmed, and the water never had to be shut off. “We put out messages right away, telling everyone what happened, so they would not do laundry right away or not drink right away, then we put out a message right away saying it was back to normal,” he said. Kooyman said the city’s water system is extremely old, and while crews have already updated nearly half of it, rising costs have slowed progress. “I know we haven’t finished the town yet, but it is in the process; we bought a large quantity of line to do at the time, we thought it would be a five-year project, we actually finished that in under two years, I believe. But then the cost of pipe went up, and everything went up, so we are trying to budget what we can,” he said. Kooyman added that the city is working on getting a water study and a sensor system that would alert the city if a malfunction were to occur again. “We’ve paid for an engineering firm to look at everything and do this, and that information we have to take and go after a grant, some of it we aren’t going to wait on grants because grants take forever. And if we can afford some of it now, we are going to do some of it now,” he said. Kooyman said if you’re a resident, you can sign up for notifications to get direct messages from the city in order to stay informed.