- Why was a boil water advisory issued? Is our water contaminated?
We decided to issue a boil water advisory because water storage at the treatment plant is very low (below 10% of our capacity). This creates the possibility of contamination if the lines distributing water from the plant become empty, AND there is a leak occurring, because non-potable water COULD enter our lines at the point of the leak. However we have no evidence of contamination and chlorine measurements throughout the system are within the appropriate range. The advisory is precautionary.
- If the advisory is precautionary, how seriously do I need to take it? What should I do?
The Vancouver Island Health Authority has useful information on the their website to guide your decision making. See their FAQ at https://www.islandhealth.ca/learn-about-health/drinking-water/what-do-during-boil-water-notice/boil-water-faqs.
- Why is water storage at the plant so low?
Several factors have combined to lead to this problem. The main issue is that the filtration system at the plant is creating pressure as we pump water from our wells to be treated. To address this problem we have replaced the media (sand, gravel, etc) in the three filtration tanks at the plant. The final media replacement took place on Monday July 22. After the media is replaced we need to do a backwash (running the water in reverse through the tanks to remove fine material. Because of our low storage situation, we haven’t had enough water to complete this step.
In general, maintaining storage requires pumping at least as much water into the plant as is being delivered to consumers. In the summer, water use increases and normally we can simply pump more water in to offset the increased use. Because of the pressure situation we haven’t been able to do this for the past few weeks. Since the boil water advisory was announced, consumption has really dropped, which is a huge help.
- Are our wells running out of water?
We have no reason to believe that we are running short of water in our wells. The problem lies with the filtration system at the treatment plant.
- Can we bring in water from outside the district?
Yes, and we have been doing that. South Island Water has been bringing truckloads of water (3,900 US gallons per load) to us this week (July 21-26), and we will probably need to continue into next week. However each truckload costs $1,300 so this is obviously not a sustainable solution.
- What about leaks?
Unfortunately, we also have a leak in the system. We have narrowed the location of the leak to Mariners Way between Dinner Bay Road and Crane Point, but there’s more work to do to pinpoint the leak and stop it. We are looking into bringing in the leak detection specialists from Victoria that helped us find the major leak we had to deal with in January of this year.
- Would household meters have helped with this situation?
We don’t think so. The problem we are facing is not one of excessive consumption by a few households – which is not to say this doesn’t occur. Household meters would not help us pinpoint the leak because it’s just as easy to turn the water off to a property to see if there’s a leak versus checking a meter.