Town of Gibsons officials won’t know until the first half of August at the earliest whether they can stop chlorinating the municipal water supplied to about 75 per cent of properties within the town, director of engineering Dave Newman told Gibsons council Tuesday, July 15.
All areas of the town that receive water from the Gibsons aquifer were back on the municipal water system last week after emergency chlorination was installed at three Town wells.
Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) ordered chlorination after E.coli was detected in samples taken from the Parkland reservoir early last month. Newman said an inspection of the reservoir did not turn up “any obvious sources of contamination.”
Staff will meet with VCH’s drinking water officer in early August to discuss how long chlorination will be required.
To improve the system, some remediation works were completed at the Parkland reservoir, including the installation of rodent screens on overflow pipes. The Town is also looking at hiring a contractor to install backflow preventers to about 12 businesses that so far have not complied with that requirement. If the Town does proceed with the installations, Newman said, the cost would not be much higher than if the businesses themselves hired a contractor to do the work.
Two sets of daily water samples were being analyzed after the Parkland reservoir refilled Tuesday, and if the results come back negative, Newman said, VCH would authorize bringing the reservoir back in service.
At that point, stage 3 watering restrictions can be lifted and replaced by stage 2 restrictions, he said, adding that could happen by this Friday, July 18.
Updates will be posted on the Town website at www.gibsons.ca.
Costs related to the incident will be included in a report to council in September, Newman said.
