Angers Boils Over Aylmer Water Warning
Published by Victor Belleville on 2010-07-21
by Dave Rogers
Many of Aylmer's 42,000 residents drank inadequately purified water last week because Gatineau failed to properly notify them that they had to boil city drinking water, Lucerne Councillor André Laframboise said Tuesday.
Laframboise said he received dozens of complaints from Aylmer residents who said they did not know that they were supposed to boil their tapwater for a minute before drinking it.
Gatineau issued a news release on Thursday that warned people in the Aylmer sector to boil drinking water because of a power failure at a water-filtration plant on the Ottawa River.
Laframboise said the backup treatment system did not work properly.
The boil-water advisory continued until Sunday morning. There have been no reports of residents becoming ill after drinking the water.
Laframboise said the city's telephone warning system that automatically calls residents when they need to boil possibly contaminated water failed because many people were not at home, do not have telephone answering machines and did not hear the warning.
"The city notified people about the need to boil water through a press release and if you didn't happen to be in the right place at the right time to hear the news or read the paper, you wouldn't know about the warning," Laframboise said.
"We have an automated telephone system that called about 1,000 households but not the whole sector. The last time we did this was several weeks ago, when we asked people to reduce their water consumption because of inadequate water pressure."
Laframboise said a new $22-million filtration plant is being built near the Aylmer Marina because the current plant can't provide enough water.
Until the new filtration plant, scheduled to be completed in spring 2011, is up and running, the city needs a better way to warn people about problems with city water, Laframboise said.
"It is not good enough for people to find out about the drinking water a day or a day-and-a-half after the city warns people that there may be a problem," Laframboise said. "Many people said they drank the water or made juice for their kids and were upset because they found out about the warning afterwards."
Laframboise said city employees should distribute printed boil-water warnings by hand to households because it is unfair to put people's health at risk.
A water shortage in May prompted Gatineau to order residents not to use tapwater outdoors throughout the city. The ban on outdoor water use meant residents couldn't wash cars or driveways, water lawns or plants, fill swimming pools or even drink water from outside taps.
More than 30 residents were fined $267 for violating the ban.
