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Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
Flood-impacted Manitobans with private wells and cisterns can test their water supply for free, as the province pushes to waive off fees temporarily. The move will subsidize costs related to water testing. In an announcement on May 8, the province said the push aims to lift some of the financial burdens caused by flooding. It comes into effect Monday and ends on Aug. 31.
Water testing in the village of Roche Percee has revealed E. coli contamination, and a boil-water order has been initiated, the provincial Ministry of Health said Friday The order is applicable for the entire community and other individuals who access water from Roche Percee, about 20 kilometres southeast of Estevan. "It's been an ongoing crisis here for a while," Mayor Jay Riedel said. "We've gone through a flood in 2011 when six to seven feet of water was here, which compromised a lot of stuff in this area. "Our water levels in wells are low and without the rain, when we need to keep them full, we're usually down at the bottom all the time."
It’s about the reaction to a photograph taken of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) inspectors taking water samples near Pense — the workers said they thought they were working on public land next to the highway, while a landowner claimed the work was being done on private land. It should have stopped right there — as a misunderstanding about whether the land was public or private, with efforts to do better in the future. Instead, it became the latest federal/provincial football. Some people have got in touch with me after I wrote about this issue last week to point out that I haven’t lived here long enough to understand the way Saskatchewan residents feel about private land.
Evacuees from Neskantaga First Nation started returning home Monday after recent water testing showed chlorine and microbiological levels were at acceptable levels after a new pump was installed in the local water system. The previous piece of equipment malfunctioned earlier in September, triggering a state of emergency. About 220 residents were in Thunder Bay for more than a week after the pump went down on Sept. 14. Chief Chris Moonias called for the evacuation himself, concerned about symptoms he said were showing up in community members, including skin rashes, stomach problems and headaches.
A former employee of the Town of Oyen in southern Alberta has been fined $1,000 for not monitoring the town's drinking water over a seven-year period. Darcy Dobrosky worked for the town for 37 years and was grandfathered into the public works foreman job. One of his duties was to monitor the town's drinking water — despite failing the formal certification required to do the job.
For the past 14 years, Colville Lake, N.W.T. has been under a boil water advisory.The reason isn't due to lack of access to a water treatment plant or proper training to operate it — the community doesn't bother to send water samples to the territorial government for sampling because residents believe their water is clean enough to drink straight from the lake.
Amber Sears removes a glass stopper from a beaker, gives the contents a swirl and takes a whiff.
The 23-year-old is a water lab technician and sniffing is her job.
"You're smelling for musty and earthy smells," Sears said. "That's what happens when the spring runoff happens, when the vegetation comes into the water."
She checks the scent wheel which offers descriptors like fishy, swampy and flowery. The wheel helps testers like Sears circle in on the aromatic analysis of our drinking water.
