New Brunswick community faces boil advisory after days without running water

Jacob Porter woke up around 7 a.m. on Dec. 22 to get ready for work. That’s when he realized the toilet wouldn’t flush.

“It’s unpleasant to say the least,” he said.

The water in his community, Tamarack Estates in Oromocto N.B., was off for residents of its 416 lots.

Porter said he and his wife had to wait six more days, including Christmas, before they got access to their water again.

“We had a Charlie Brown Christmas,” he said. That included using the washroom and cleaning up when they visited family. As of Dec. 30, the Department of Health still had a boil order issued for the community.

“It’s a very basic right as a tenant to have drinkable water,” he said.

Residents in the community own their homes but rent the plots of land.

The company that owns Tamarack Estates, Canadian Apartment Properties REIT (CAPREIT), told residents in an email that the disruption was due to a leak in the underground water system. The email also said it wasn’t a simple water leak and lacked identifiable markers for workers to find and repair it.

Subsequently, its managers told residents in community emails that the leak has been identified and will be repaired next week. It also said the boiling order has to be lifted by the Department of Health.

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The company did not respond to a request for an interview and instead provided an emailed statement. In the statement, sent on Dec. 29, the company said all homes had access to water.

“While our efforts were singularly focused on making the required repairs to our water system, we will now begin the process of implementing additional systems improvements to mitigate against similar service interruptions in the future,” the statement said.

During the water disruption, the company brought a water truck into the community and offered access to unfiltered wells.

Porter said he doesn’t trust the water in the community.

“I don’t trust to drink it for the sole fact that we go on boil orders so often that I don’t know when it will be contaminated again,” he said.

He’s lived in the community for about two and a half years and said two or three times a year residents can’t drink their water due to power outages. Last February, he said he couldn’t drink his water for five days.

After the December disruption, CAPREIT offered to cover residents’ costs for water-related purchases like showers, drinking water and sanitization products. Porter wants to see the park reduce rent for the month.

“I personally would like a discount, but I’m still waiting for my reimbursement from February,” he said.

Porter said the park’s pipes have been an issue for a long time — he said friends living on the park warned him about it before he moved in. He wants to see those pipes replaced. “Don’t put Band-Aids on it, get on top of it.”