Volume 55 Number 05
Friday, February 6, 2015
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Armstrong’s War arrives in the north
Nickel Belt New photo by Bruce Monk courtesy of Royal MTC Justin Otto as Corporal Michael Armstrong and Heather Russell as Halley Armstrong in Armstrong’s War. See related column on Page 2.
Boil water advisories an ongoing issue in Northern Manitoba BY MOLLY GIBSON KIRBY MOLLY@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
With the recent boil water advisory (BWA) in Winnipeg due to a positive test for E. Coli making headlines, many northern communities may be wishing their own drinking water issues could be solved so quickly. As of Feb. 4, there were four Northern Manitoba communities with public water systems under a BWA: Cormorant North, God’s Lake Narrows, Leaf Rapids, Lynn Lake, and Sherridon. Dr. Michael Isaac, medical officer of health for the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA), says the health authority issues a BWA when they believe there may be a threat to the public from the water. There are usually two main reasons one would issue an advisory. “The first would be with
water quality. That for example could be you do some testing on the water and you find there’s E. coli in the water. That would lead you to think there is some contamination in the water. That’s when we’d put a boil water advisory on, until such time we do an investigation and are able to rectify the water quality issues.” Isaac continued by saying the second is due to operational issues, meaning the water isn’t being treated properly in the water treatment system. James Lindsay, mayor of Lynn Lake, says his community has been under a BWA for years now. “The Town of Lynn Lake has had its municipal water system under a BWA since Oct. 12, 2012. This has been caused by ongoing equipment problems with our new water treatment plant, which first began to
cause us problems shortly after it was first turned on in September of 2011. The Town of Lynn Lake does not believe that the problems with the plant are operational issues.” Lindsay says he has been drinking tap water at home for the past 27 months, but not until it reaches a boil for at least one minute. Isaac says the NRHA is conducting tests on an ongoing basis to help lift the advisories. “We look at the presence of E. coli, total coliform and chloride residuals. So for the most part the testing in those communities is satisfactory from what we’ve seen.” If the water advisory is not due to water quality, it’s on the shoulders of the municipality or town to fix the problem. Isaac says however the NRHA is trying to help, too. “We never want to have a long-term boil water
advisory if we don’t have to. So the Northern Health Region would work with the Office of Drinking Water, which is through the Department of Conservation, who would work with the town to try and rectify the situation.” But with the extended BWA, some Lynn Lake residents have taken making fresh and safe drinking water into their own hands. “Prior to this last and much lengthier BWA, some residents chose to purchase water from a reverse osmosis filtration system at a local retailer. This was a practice some residents undertook even when our municipal water system was meeting provincial guidelines for drinking water safety. Others chose to collect water from a freshwater spring some distance out of town,” explained Lindsay. Some local businesses
and public facilities even bought their own reverse osmosis filtration systems due to the high volume of water being drunk at places like the local school. But this is not cheap, Lindsay noted. “There has been a relatively large cost associated with that, and the school is in the process of completing commissioning and certification/testing of their system.” Although Lindsay commends Winnipeg for the speedy recovery, he hopes the scare opens residents’ eyes to what others deal with. “Many small and even mid-sized communities in Manitoba have difficulties with the cost burden that provision of clean safe drinking water comes with. I felt relieved to know that the issue in Winnipeg was a relatively minor and very temporary inconvenience for them. Had it been a
major and long-term problem, I fear that a lot of current resources allocated to addressing problems Lynn Lake and other smaller communities face may have been redirected.” Lynn Lake’s BWA will not be lifted until the water treatment plant is operating the way it’s meant to be and the community passes three consecutive samples tested by an independent lab. But, Lindsay won’t stop fighting, and will continue talks with the government about the issue. “The town has been involved in numerous discussions with Manitoba Water Services, the original plant manufacturer, as well as sought the advice and assistance of several external drinking water specialists who were previously uninvolved with the Lynn Lake water treatment plant until we sought their further advice.”