A rumor, a rating and a coliform scare test Lingle's small-town systems

TORRINGTON – A false rumor that the Lingle Volunteer Fire Department had closed its doors is driving up home insurance premiums for some town residents, while a positive bacteria test in two of the town's wells this week put water quality briefly in question, town officials told the Lingle Town Council at its Aug. 5 meeting.

Neither situation points to an actual failure of the town's fire protection or drinking water, officials said. But both illustrate how a small town's infrastructure — and its insurance costs — can hinge on data most residents never see.

A fire rating rumor with real costs

Fire Chief Kasey Bangerter told the council that at least two town residents have received notices from the same insurance company informing them their premiums were increasing because the Lingle Volunteer Fire Department was closed. The department has not closed and continues to operate as it always has, Bangerter said.

The confusion appears to trace back to a routine visit from an ISO rating inspector two to four months ago. The Insurance Services Office, a national advisory organization now operated by data analytics firm Verisk, evaluates fire departments nationwide and assigns each community a Public Protection Classification, a score from 1 to 10 that most insurers use to help set homeowners' fire insurance rates. A Class 1 reflects superior fire protection; a Class 10 means a department falls short of ISO's minimum standards altogether.

Lingle's town rating has sat at Class 5 for years without changing, Bangerter said, and the ISO inspector's visit resulted in only a few minor issues the department expects to correct, not a downgrade.

Bangerter has been trying to trace where the closure rumor originated, saying the insurance contact he has been able to reach works out of New Jersey and has not yet explained the source of the information.

"We're still open and not closed," he told the council, and said he planned to keep pressing the matter, including potentially involving the state insurance commissioner's office if needed.

The ISO score is built from three weighted categories, according to ISO's Fire Suppression Rating Schedule: half of the score comes from the fire department itself — staffing, training, equipment and response times; 40% comes from the community's water supply, including the number of fire hydrants and how much water is available to fight a structure fire; and the remaining 10% comes from emergency communications and dispatch. Bangerter cited that same breakdown to the council, saying it explains why in-town properties near fire hydrants and rural properties served by the same department are rated differently.

That distinction matters most for property owners outside town limits. Residents in rural areas without hydrant access already carry a separate, typically higher classification than in-town residents, largely because ISO scores water supply based on hydrant proximity and flow — not on whether a fire department is staffed and operating. Bangerter said he has not heard of rural residents receiving the same insurance notices as in-town residents, and doesn't expect them to, since rural ratings are already calculated differently and would not shift based on a rumor about the department's status.

Bangerter said he has requested records from the ISO evaluator to determine exactly where the closure notification originated and get it corrected before more residents receive rate increases tied to inaccurate information.

What the water tests found Town Supervisor Logan

Dailey told the council the town received a total-coliform- positive sample from routine monitoring this past Monday. Under EPA rules, a single positive result requires water systems to immediately collect a new round of samples across the distribution system to confirm whether the finding points to an actual problem.

Lingle's retest of the distribution system — the water that actually reaches homes and businesses — came back clean, Dailey said. Two of the town's individual wells, however, still tested positive for total coliform when sampled separately.

Total coliform bacteria are common, largely harmless organisms naturally present in the environment. Regulators use their presence mainly as an early-warning indicator

that a bigger problem — most seriously, contamination by E. coli, which does pose a health risk — could be entering a water system through a treatment issue, a source contamination or a breach somewhere in the distribution system. A positive total-coliform result does not, by itself, mean the water is unsafe to drink.

The town did not issue a boil-water notice, which EPA rules require only when a sample tests positive for E. coli specifically. Dailey said the Environmental Protection Agency reviewed Lingle's results and determined no further action was required at this time, and that regulators suspect the positive readings trace back to contamination at the sampling point itself rather than the wells or the water supply.

Dailey said he was also told the town isn't alone: with this summer's stretch of near-100-degree days, water systems around the state have been reporting similar total-coliform blips.

"Everything is fine," Dailey told the council. "That has been addressed."

A previously scheduled sanitary survey, an EPA well house inspection, was already on the calendar for the day after the positive sample. Dailey said the inspector would walk through all of the town's well houses and offer recommendations for preventing future contamination.

Dailey also flagged separate, longer- running maintenance issues with the town's well infrastructure. Battery backups for the wells are supposed to be replaced every two years; some are four or five years overdue, and Dailey said he is working with Timberline Electric to get replacement cables sent out. A separate problem with the wells' remote monitoring system has also been fixed, he said, and the wells are now operating correctly and autonomously.

This story was published on August 7, 2026.

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