Sludge Watch ==> E. coli in Vancouver Drinking Water - Boil Water Advisory

[Maureen Reilly]

E. coli found in B.C. water
Health officials unconcerned, running second test for confirmation
ROBERT MATAS

VANCOUVER -- The potentially deadly E. coli bacteria has been discovered in 
a sample of Vancouver water, medical health officer Patricia Daly told 
reporters yesterday at a hastily arranged news conference.

However health officials were not overconcerned about the preliminary test 
results. The water may have been contaminated by runoff from compost near 
the sampling site on the grounds of the University of British Columbia, Dr. 
Daly said.

Further testing will be required to determine whether the water flowing 
through the municipal system was contaminated. Results from those tests were 
not expected to be available before this morning.

E. coli bacteria from farm runoff contaminated the water supply in 
Walkerton, Ont., in May, 2000. The contamination led to seven deaths. More 
than 2,600 people became ill.

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E. coli found in B.C. water
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The Greater Vancouver Regional District issued a boil-water advisory for two 
million residents throughout the region on Nov. 16, a day after much of the 
region's water turned murky from silt washed into its reservoirs after a 
100-millimetre rainfall. A day later, the advisory was scaled back after the 
water from one of the city's three reservoirs cleared up. The boil-water 
advisory currently covers about one million people in Vancouver, Burnaby and 
communities on the North Shore.

The discovery of E. coli bacteria in the water yesterday was the first time 
that tests came back with positive results.

Dr. Daly refused to identify the location of the contaminated water. She 
would reveal only that the water was not near student residences or any 
student buildings.

Despite the positive results, health officials in the region decided that a 
citywide order to stop drinking the water was unnecessary. No evidence has 
surfaced linking any illness to contaminated water, Dr. Daly said. Also, 
despite close to 600 tests at various sites, none of the other test results 
have come back positive.

"All other sites were negative," Dr. Daly said. "This is one site. We 
believe it is likely a false positive."

Hospitals, daycare centres and residential care home facilities have been 
told since the beginning of the water crisis that they should not use the 
water. But it continues to be a matter of choice for everyone else. "The 
public can take action as they see fit," Dr. Daly said. "We do not believe 
the risk of illness is high."

Water in two of the region's three reservoirs remains dirty, Paul Archibald, 
regional district manager of water supply, told reporters yesterday. The 
level of turbidity, which reflects the murkiness of the water, has bounced 
around over the past few days.

Medical health officers were waiting to see a downward trend before lifting 
the advisory. "We hope we can lift it in a matter of days," Dr. Daly said, 
"but that depends on the turbidity."

Will Koop, a Vancouver resident who has monitored the district's water 
management for several years, challenged officials who have said that 
logging in the watersheds was not responsible for the mudslides. Mr. Koop 
said he spent four hours on a tour through the watershed this week.

Rushing waters in a tributary running into the reservoir was "chocolate 
brown" from a mudslide in an area that was logged in the 1920s, he said. He 
accused district officials of trying to minimize the impact of logging in 
the watershed. "They were gambling with our water resources," Mr. Koop said.

Greater Vancouver's water comes from rainfall and snowmelt in three 
watersheds on the North Shore Mountains. Regional district officials have 
said that heavy rain on supersaturated soil caused mudslides into rivers 
flowing into the region's reservoirs. Screening on the water mains stops 
solid particles from flowing through the pipes, but considerable silt still 
passes through.

The regional district is currently building a $600-million filtration plant 
that will effectively prevent a recurrence of this year's water crisis. 
However, the filtration plant will not be in operation until 2009.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan, a director on the regional district board, 
dismissed a suggestion yesterday that the filtration plant should have been 
built earlier, once health concerns about Vancouver's water surfaced in the 
1990s .

Chief medical health officer John Blatherwick, who was an outspoken advocate 
for construction of a filtration plant in the mid-1990s, was mainly 
concerned about the old, the young and those with compromised immune 
systems, Mr. Corrigan said. "But there was no record of people being ill or 
dying," he said.

The regional district decided to build a filtration plant after a federal 
government report in 2000 found a link between muddy drinking water and 
gastrointestinal illnesses. But the project was delayed by a decision by the 
regional district not to move ahead with plans for a joint public-private 
partnership, or P3, for the filtration plant. The P3 option sparked vocal 
opposition by those concerned about the privatization of water.

Politicians on the regional district board in the early years of this decade 
made the decision they felt was right at that time, Mr. Corrigan said. "You 
can always go back and in hindsight say you should have made different 
decisions or you should have moved quicker. But I think the project is 
coming along perfectly," Mr. Corrigan said. "We're not having any problems; 
we're tracking well under budget and we're doing this in the time-frame we 
said it would be done. I think public enterprise is showing we can do an 
effective project."


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