PETERSBURG -- The village of Petersburg is recovering from a suspected outbreak of a unique disease after problems with its water tower.

"I'm not a conspiracy guy, I don't think anyone's doing anything intentionally," said Ted Thieman of Petersburg. He is one of more than 40 people in central Nebraska's city of Petersburg who had caught a campylobacter illness as winter approached. "I came down with what was like flu symptoms, diarrhea, and so forth," he said. The state had only ever had one ever case of campylobacter before this outbreak. 

When Ted Thieman got sick, Mary Thieman told him to test himself for campylobacter, as she had seen many others get sick. She even started taking stool samples and testing the water for contamination. 

"I'm the poop driver, taking samples back and forth. The more evidence we have, the more we can make our case," said Mary Thieman. 

The investigation into the disease's origins and Petersburg's water began around August.

"With a disease like campylobacter, people go to the doctor, and then the doctor identified [it is] a reportable disease, and that's how this was discovered," Dempsey said.

In October, the East Central District Health Department initially concluded the outbreak came from food, not water.

"I'm not blaming my town board. I really appreciate what they do, but they kind of concluded a little prematurely that it was not a water issue," Ted Thieman said.

Water tower experts with Maguire Inc. later stated the tower's gaps welcomed bird contamination -- meaning the tower needs to have its roof completely replaced -- or sealed up every five years.

Currently, officials are saying it likely started when birds got into the city's water tower.

"They need to do some tower maintenance because there are gaps in the seams. It's a little problematic with the time of the year," Sue Dempsey of the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy said. The city will have to consider the risk of water freezing if they're working on it.

"I hope we just kind of come up with the right answers and quit what I call catfighting around town because the rumors cause as much trouble as the illness," Ted Thieman said.

The village board told NCN they test the water monthly and follow all federal regulations, and have tried the best they can to prevent something like this happening. 

As of this week, NDEE stated campylobacter is not a problem in Petersburg anymore because the water is being chlorinated. That means the water is safe to drink. 

Petersburg's water operator, who also serves in several other positions for the village, has not yet commented. 

The CDC's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases explained the issue further in an email to NCN, December 30th:

"Starting in September, CDC has supported state and local health authorities with a Campylobacter outbreak in Petersburg associated with the municipal drinking water system. Water testing from the system identified molecular evidence of bird feces in the same drinking water sample as Campylobacter spp. DNA and culturable coliforms, suggesting bird fecal contamination of the water system led to the outbreak," they stated. "The state water authority is responding to these results by requiring a thorough inspection of the water tower."

Petersburg is set to discuss the issue more on Tuesday, where Ted Thieman plans to pitch an idea: "I'm uninformed but I would like to suggest they test the water tower itself before it gets into the waterline."

Meanwhile, Mary Thieman plans to bring up grants.

"I would like the town board to pursue grants for a new tower, so we never have to deal with contaminated water ever again," Mary Thieman said, noting that she would volunteer to write grant applications. "Too many people had to suffer."