MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa — Marshalltown’s annual Oktemberfest celebration is taking place in its planned location following the town’s city council voting against a Marshall County Health Department recommendation to move the festival due to Marshalltown’s legionella outbreak.

Sydney Grewell, the Marshall County Public Health Director, said that the recommendation was made out of an abundance of caution.

“We recommended, like I said, removing from out of downtown, just out of precautionary measures. Those few cases that are popping up are not because of a new outbreak. It is the incubation period for Legionnaires’ disease is 2 to 14 days. So that’s a long time for it to kind of hang around in a system before someone could get sick,” Grewell said.

Health officials said that the likely source of the outbreak was cooling towers in the north central part of downtown Marshalltown. Grewell said the cooling towers have undergone one round of maintenance while they were active, and are now undergoing a second round while they are inactive.

“We’re now in the process of completing offline remediation, which means that those businesses must take those cooling towers completely offline so they’re not functional, fully clean and disinfect them. And those are being provided by third party companies that are specializing in cleaning,” Grewell said.

Tammy Losing, one of the Oktemberfest event organizers, said that she is thankful the celebration did not have to change locations on a short notice.

“We were very grateful that we got to stay here in this location. We worked very hard all year, starting last year, right after last year’s festival start was over,” Losing said.

Oktemberfest runs all weekend long. To learn more about the celebration visit the Oktemberfest website.