A boil water advisory has ended for nearly 10,000 people in Abbotsford, B.C., after E. coli bacteria was detected in a private provider’s water system on Thursday.
The Clearbrook Waterworks District — which serves a two-square-kilometre area in west Abbotsford, according to its website — issued the boil water advisory on Friday after its water distribution system was breached at the reservoir.
It had asked its customers to only consume their water after it has been brought to a rolling boil for at least one minute.
The utility is now asking customers to run their cold water faucets, drinking fountains and garden hoses for one minute before using them, after extensive sampling from the Fraser Health authority showed that there were no signs of contamination.
“Drain and refill hot water heaters set below 45 C (normal setting is 60 C),” the advisory reads.
Jason Hildebrandt, the corporate administrator for Clearbrook, said Tuesday that the utility had never detected E. coli in the distribution system itself, but only within a single reservoir, which was subsequently drained and treated with chlorine.
“We have a large population of retirees in our district,” he told CBC News. “And so we just needed to be very careful, working very closely with Fraser Health, and obviously they have protocols for these things.”
Hildebrandt said the utility would investigate to find out how exactly the reservoir had been contaminated, and that there was nothing on the reservoir’s exterior that would indicate where it was breached.
“What we’re hopeful for is that when we get into that reservoir, we physically find something that is obvious to us, whether it’s an incursion from a small bird or something,” he said.
Nearly 10,000 residents of Abbotsford, B.C., have been under a boil water advisory for days as E. coli was detected in one of the water district’s reservoirs late last week. As Jon Hernandez reports, while concerns in the community are mounting, the district hopes it won’t be long before residents can once again drink from the tap.
A spokesperson for Fraser Health said it advised Clearbrook to issue the boil water notice as a “public health precautionary measure.”
“We want to reassure community members that the boil water advisory was issued out of an abundance of caution,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “No illnesses or hospitalizations have been reported related to this advisory.”
Hildebrandt says many Clearbrook employees have worked there for over two decades.
“It’s very upsetting to know that people are scared, that they may have lost faith in us, but we remain diligent and dedicated,” he said. “We’re here every day … working on it and making sure that we’re keeping people safe.”
Fraser Health says E. coli is of particular concern to infants, seniors, and people with weakened immune systems.
Health Canada says people who are infected with E. coli can have a wide range of symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, headaches and mild fever.