Updated on July 18, 2025 at 5:28 p.m. CT
The do not drink order for tap water in Mattoon has been lifted.
In a notice on the city’s website, officials said toxin levels in water samples have continued to fall. The notice states that samples from the past three days showed neurotoxin levels dropped to a safe range.
Samples from the last two days showed the toxins have dropped to a level that is considered undetected according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The city said residents should flush all cold and hot water lines separately for 5 -to-10 minutes each before using the water.
The notice states Mattoon will continue to distribute bottled water Saturday at Lytle Park and Arland D. Williams Elementary School.
Updated on July 18, 2025 at 1:57 p.m. CT
MATTOON — Mattoon’s annual Bagelfest is up and running at Peterson Park despite a do not drink order on the city’s water supply.
Organizers trucked in water from out of town to avoid tapping into the city’s reservoir.
Running through Saturday, the festival offers live entertainment, a parade and a free bagel breakfast.
Since the 1980s, the Lender’s Bagels factory in Mattoon has been providing food for what organizers call “The World’s Biggest Bagel Breakfast.”
Brian Heaton brought his daughter with him to the festival. They went on carnival rides at Bagelfest, an annual ritual for the two of them.
“This is just like start of the summer,” Heaton said. “You got Bagelfest first, then you got the [Coles County Fair].”
Heaton lives south of Mattoon. He uses Clear Water, a rural water system that is one of many suppliers for Bagelfest.
That also means his water source was not affected by the algal bloom that contaminated the city’s reservoir-fed water supply.
Mattoon officials enacted a do not drink order on July 10, when they detected microcystins, a neurotoxin unsafe for consumption, in the reservoir supply. The city distributed bottled water before lifting the order on July 13, when officials said the neurotoxins had dropped to safe levels.
But on Tuesday, the city put the do not drink order back in effect, saying the concentration of microcystins in the water supply had inched back up to an unsafe level.
Though organizers at Bagelfest used different water suppliers, some vendors said the contaminated water did cause issues for them ahead of the celebration.
Chris Walden runs a lemon shakeup and funnel cake stand. He said he went to Charleston to pick up water and ice for the festival this week. But he said he ran into challenges earlier when he used Mattoon water at other locations — just before the city declared its supply unsafe twice in a row.
“It’s been a struggle,” Walden said. “We’ve been sanitizing machines — as a matter of fact, some of our machines have all been sanitized. And then of course, they put the order back in. So everything we did was for naught now. So we’re going to have to re-sanitize everything that we’re not using right now.”
Mattoon said the latest tests on Thursday showed neurotoxin levels to be within safe limits, but officials stated they want to see one more safe test result before lifting the order. Another round of tests is scheduled for Friday.