By Don PlantFriday, March 9, 2007 Kelowna Courier
Renee Clark and her two colleagues were busier than usual Thursday, making 100 phone calls, sending 40 e-mails and faxing 240 customers. The water division of Greater Vernon Services issued a water-quality advisory, a warning for people with delicate immune systems to
boil their drinking water for at least a minute or find a safe alternative. A rototiller harvesting weeds at the north end of Kalamalka Lake had stirred up sediment the day before and raised the turbidity level of drinking water for the 35,000 people who consume from the lake. “Some people are affected, some are not. It‘s a very hard message,” said Clark, senior water-quality technologist for Greater Vernon. “This has been our biggest issue with (Interior) Health. How do we get the message out to people – especially people who are immune-compromised?” Clark isn‘t alone in her frustration. Water utilities up and down the Okanagan are irritated by new rules that have triggered dozens of water-quality advisories and boil-water notices since last April.
Interior Health introduced the notification program
so that consumers know when their water supplier fails to meet federal drinking-water guidelines. The health authority bases the program on turbidity – the cloudiness of the water – because pathogens such as giardia and coliform bacteria can sneak through chlorinated water systems and into people‘s kitchen taps. The problem is particularly bad in spring, when meltwater pours into reservoirs and streams and disturbs the clay and organisms on the bottom. Young children, the elderly and people on drug regimens are most susceptible to any water-borne disease hiding in the murkiness. “You have to protect the most vulnerable,” said Ken Christian, director of health protection for IH. “There are a lot more of these people than there used to be.”
The new public-alert system isn‘t working, says Toby Pike, vice-chairman of the Water Supply Association of B.C., a coalition of Okanagan-based water providers. Measuring only turbidity fails to reflect the risks of other contaminants in the water, he says. And with so many advisories and boil-water orders coming from different suppliers (there are 14 in the Central Okanagan alone), consumers are confused and growing habituated to the notices. “There‘s message fatigue,” said Pike, who also operates the South East Kelowna Irrigation District (SEKID). “Notices were flying all over the place this time last year. The media stopped running them. “They said, ‘Don‘t give us a notice unless it‘s a boil-water.‘ We felt we were falling into the cry-wolf syndrome.” Last September, SEKID‘s chlorination system failed for 20 minutes. With high pathogen loads and bacteria levels in the water, staff scrambled to issue a 24-hour boil-water notice to its customers. “We had it out to every major media outlet. Next to no one carried it. This demonstrates the concern I have about the Chicken Little syndrome. You can only say ‘the sky is falling‘ so many times,” Pike said.
Water suppliers complain public health could suffer because people can‘t distinguish between a water-quality advisory and a boil-water notice. The Okanagan Basin Water Board, which represents three regional districts, weighed in last month by supporting the call to change Interior Health‘s alert program. Meanwhile, more people are giving up on tap water and turning to bottled water to quench their thirst. Three elementary schools in Kelowna have forbidden students from drinking from fountains, providing large water coolers instead. The school district spent $20,000 on bottled water from April through June last year, said Al Cumbers, director of operations. The Water Supply Association is trying to convince Interior Health it should only issue public alerts when water quality gets so bad, it amounts to a public emergency. The association proposed a water-quality index – similar to the index that grades pollution levels in the air we breathe – for each supply area and irrigation district in the Southern Interior. The index would incorporate turbidity as well as levels of giardia, other pathogens and chlorine byproducts. Each water supplier would post its index on its website and notify the media and public facilities when necessary. As soon as the index suggests the water is poor, the supply manager and an expert would decide whether to issue a boil-water notice, a boil-water order or a do-not-drink order.
Christian likes the idea, but says developing an index is “far more complex” than simply adding up numbers and providing them to the public. “You have to keep adjusting the relative-weight parameters, and you need to adjust the frequency upon which the parameters are measured to make sure the index (reflects) current risk. “Then you need to market this concept to the public so they understand what a water-quality index is and what to do about it,” he said. Christian wants a technical-review committee set up to provide scientific evidence to back up the index. He‘d like his staff to work with water suppliers and, perhaps, water experts from Thompson Rivers University to design the new system. For now, the same quality threshold remains in effect – at least through 2007, Christian said.
In the years to come, expect to pay more for your drinking water. Christian estimates $500 million worth of filtration equipment is needed in the Southern Interior to keep up with federal guidelines. Penticton and Kamloops have already installed filtration systems; Naramata‘s new $8.7-million water system is now being commissioned. Many of us, though, must rely for the time being on unfiltered surface water or well water. Until filtered water is available to everyone, suppliers agree consumers need more education about what they drink and where it comes from. But they want Interior Health – not them – to contact those with compromised immune systems when water quality turns bad. “I don‘t know who they are, but doctors do,” said Renee Clark. “If someone‘s undergoing cancer treatment, the doctors should be able to say, ‘Don‘t drink the water.‘” The trouble is, federal law requires a supplier to notify the public of hazards associated with water, said Christian. Besides, doctors would have trouble knowing which water system their patients live and work in. Still, Christian agrees health officials could work closer with, say, AIDS organizations or high-risk groups so they take extra precautions and check on the status of their water supply.
Renee Clark and her two colleagues were busier than usual Thursday, making 100 phone calls, sending 40 e-mails and faxing 240 customers. The water division of Greater Vernon Services issued a water-quality advisory, a warning for people with delicate immune systems to
boil their drinking water for at least a minute or find a safe alternative. A rototiller harvesting weeds at the north end of Kalamalka Lake had stirred up sediment the day before and raised the turbidity level of drinking water for the 35,000 people who consume from the lake. “Some people are affected, some are not. It‘s a very hard message,” said Clark, senior water-quality technologist for Greater Vernon. “This has been our biggest issue with (Interior) Health. How do we get the message out to people – especially people who are immune-compromised?” Clark isn‘t alone in her frustration. Water utilities up and down the Okanagan are irritated by new rules that have triggered dozens of water-quality advisories and boil-water notices since last April.Interior Health introduced the notification program
so that consumers know when their water supplier fails to meet federal drinking-water guidelines. The health authority bases the program on turbidity – the cloudiness of the water – because pathogens such as giardia and coliform bacteria can sneak through chlorinated water systems and into people‘s kitchen taps. The problem is particularly bad in spring, when meltwater pours into reservoirs and streams and disturbs the clay and organisms on the bottom. Young children, the elderly and people on drug regimens are most susceptible to any water-borne disease hiding in the murkiness. “You have to protect the most vulnerable,” said Ken Christian, director of health protection for IH. “There are a lot more of these people than there used to be.”The new public-alert system isn‘t working, says Toby Pike, vice-chairman of the Water Supply Association of B.C., a coalition of Okanagan-based water providers. Measuring only turbidity fails to reflect the risks of other contaminants in the water, he says. And with so many advisories and boil-water orders coming from different suppliers (there are 14 in the Central Okanagan alone), consumers are confused and growing habituated to the notices. “There‘s message fatigue,” said Pike, who also operates the South East Kelowna Irrigation District (SEKID). “Notices were flying all over the place this time last year. The media stopped running them. “They said, ‘Don‘t give us a notice unless it‘s a boil-water.‘ We felt we were falling into the cry-wolf syndrome.” Last September, SEKID‘s chlorination system failed for 20 minutes. With high pathogen loads and bacteria levels in the water, staff scrambled to issue a 24-hour boil-water notice to its customers. “We had it out to every major media outlet. Next to no one carried it. This demonstrates the concern I have about the Chicken Little syndrome. You can only say ‘the sky is falling‘ so many times,” Pike said.
Water suppliers complain public health could suffer because people can‘t distinguish between a water-quality advisory and a boil-water notice. The Okanagan Basin Water Board, which represents three regional districts, weighed in last month by supporting the call to change Interior Health‘s alert program. Meanwhile, more people are giving up on tap water and turning to bottled water to quench their thirst. Three elementary schools in Kelowna have forbidden students from drinking from fountains, providing large water coolers instead. The school district spent $20,000 on bottled water from April through June last year, said Al Cumbers, director of operations. The Water Supply Association is trying to convince Interior Health it should only issue public alerts when water quality gets so bad, it amounts to a public emergency. The association proposed a water-quality index – similar to the index that grades pollution levels in the air we breathe – for each supply area and irrigation district in the Southern Interior. The index would incorporate turbidity as well as levels of giardia, other pathogens and chlorine byproducts. Each water supplier would post its index on its website and notify the media and public facilities when necessary. As soon as the index suggests the water is poor, the supply manager and an expert would decide whether to issue a boil-water notice, a boil-water order or a do-not-drink order.
Christian likes the idea, but says developing an index is “far more complex” than simply adding up numbers and providing them to the public. “You have to keep adjusting the relative-weight parameters, and you need to adjust the frequency upon which the parameters are measured to make sure the index (reflects) current risk. “Then you need to market this concept to the public so they understand what a water-quality index is and what to do about it,” he said. Christian wants a technical-review committee set up to provide scientific evidence to back up the index. He‘d like his staff to work with water suppliers and, perhaps, water experts from Thompson Rivers University to design the new system. For now, the same quality threshold remains in effect – at least through 2007, Christian said.
In the years to come, expect to pay more for your drinking water. Christian estimates $500 million worth of filtration equipment is needed in the Southern Interior to keep up with federal guidelines. Penticton and Kamloops have already installed filtration systems; Naramata‘s new $8.7-million water system is now being commissioned. Many of us, though, must rely for the time being on unfiltered surface water or well water. Until filtered water is available to everyone, suppliers agree consumers need more education about what they drink and where it comes from. But they want Interior Health – not them – to contact those with compromised immune systems when water quality turns bad. “I don‘t know who they are, but doctors do,” said Renee Clark. “If someone‘s undergoing cancer treatment, the doctors should be able to say, ‘Don‘t drink the water.‘” The trouble is, federal law requires a supplier to notify the public of hazards associated with water, said Christian. Besides, doctors would have trouble knowing which water system their patients live and work in. Still, Christian agrees health officials could work closer with, say, AIDS organizations or high-risk groups so they take extra precautions and check on the status of their water supply.
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