FACTS: City under boil water order

At the end of this story we've provided links about the boil water order as well as information on how to use the water safely durig the order.

By Andrew de Souza

paNOW Staff

The Prince Albert Parkland Health region has placed an emergency boil water advisory after the presence of pathogenic microorganisms in public water was confirmed today.

“The precautionary boil water advisory has been elevated to an emergency boil water order and that is a result of some of the investigation and testing that has been done,” said medical health officer Dr. James Irvine.

“The investigation detected giardia in the drinking water.”

Tests conducted at the River Street reservoir on Feb. 4 and 5 and completed today by the ministry of environment found a concentration of giardia cysts, or eggs, at 1.5 organisms per 100 gallons of water.

Irvine said the conditions that giardia is found in are the same for cryptosporidium so it was included in the advisory, but a smaller concentration of that was found.

He also added that tests for bacteria, such as E. Coli and other coliforms had come back negative for their presence.

“We’re basing our decision on the small number of giardia cysts found in the water, not bacteria,” Irvine said.

He said the number was well below danger levels and comparable to the concentrations found in nature, but it was a precautionary measure the health region was ready to take.

“Giardia is very common in surface water througout the world and it is a common organism and is probably to most common parasite picked up by humans,” he said.

Why the wait

According to Andy Busse, environmental protection officer with the ministry said the reason it took so long to have the emergency order put in place was the time it took to conduct the test.

The city had to transport 1000 gallons of filtered water, which took about 9 hours to collect, send it to a lab which would then take up to ten hours to test.

Busse said water coming directly out of the plant and into the reservoir was meeting ministry standards and had been since Friday night.

“The samples from Feb. 4 and 5 both had positive samples for giardia,” he said.

“The water treatment facility has been working phenomenally well. Basically since late Friday night, it’s been making excellent water and in that respect the water treatment plant is operating properly.”

Irvine confirmed that the issue wasn’t water being produced, but water that had already entered into the system.

Little danger to the public

Irvine said the vast majority of adults would be unaffected by such a concentration of the parasite in the water.

He said in communities where giardia had been problematic, the concentration had been four or five times higher before the water utilities even noticed, so the current actions were very proactive.

Irvine said the earliest people could begin to show symptoms would be three days, with most people taking between one and two weeks for anything to appear, if it ever did at all.

He said people with compromised immune systems were whom should be most cautious about boiling their water.

Two weeks to flush system

City manager Robert Cotterill said the system would still take about two weeks to flush. However, he said the bigger issue was having enough water in the reservoirs to flush out the system and still maintain enough pressure to fight fires.

He said a consultant specializing in flushing distribution systems had been retained and was drafting a proposal on the best way to flush the system.

Rural users may have longer wait

Ken Danger, manager of the Prince Albert Rural Water Utility explained that the system for rural homes was directly connected to the Prince Albert system and so would be flushed at the same time.

He said the problem was that the rural system had a slightly different design where lines do not always terminate at a fire hydrant.

Danger said because of that, it would take longer to clean the system and remove the advisory for the 1100 or so homes on the rural system.

Water reduction still encouraged

Cotterill said water reduction was still needed because the flushing the system would be hampered only by the availability of water in the reservoirs.

Copies of the order are currently being hand delivered to all homes and business in the city on yellow paper.