Boil water order issued in Saint John

It’s something residents of Saint John have had to endure many times in the past and tens of thousands of people are going through it again. The city has issued a boil water order for all areas east of the Reversing Falls Bridge.

The order comes after a chlorinator malfunctioned early Monday morning affecting 45,000 people, making up 60 per cent of the city’s customer base.

City and Public Health officials said in an update there has been an inconsistent power supply to the Latimer Lake Water Treatment Facility over the past day or so, including another outage early this Monday.

“The power failure that occurred did result in the generator starting as it should, but a chlorinator didn’t come on as it should have,” said Saint John Water Commissioner Brent McGovern.

While this boil water order isn’t expected to be lengthy, officials say the earliest people should be able to use water directly from their taps is this Friday to allow all untreated water to exit the system.

“Once it’s at the extremity we need to take a water sample,” said McGovern. “It takes 24 hours to get those water samples then we need to take a second set of water samples 24 hours after the first. It takes another 24 hours to get those sample results.”

Public health advises people to bring water to a rolling boil for one minute before using it. It is safe for the un-boiled water to be used for some things.

“It’s safe for people to take showers, bathe and use swimming pools,” said Dr. Isaac Sobol, the Regional Medical Officer for Health in the Southern region. “It’s safe to wash dishes in hot soapy water and air dry them. It’s safe to use a dishwasher.”

Dr. Sobol advises people to take the boil order seriously.

“Organisms which are killed by chlorination for those number of minutes that the chlorine wasn’t available, those organisms could be going through the system and they can make you sick,” he said.

McGovern says this boil order wouldn’t have happened under the new safe cleaning drinking water project.