Ten-day boil water advisory a multimillion dollar impact: RDNO

Oct 3, 2019 | 1:52 PM

Boil water notices aren’t cheap and have a huge impact on communities.

The revelation revealed at Thursday’s Greater Vernon Advisory Committee meeting as RDNO staff gave the board an overview of the Greater Vernon Water 2017 Master Plan.

Zee Marcolin, general manager of utilities, told the board that a 10-day boil water incident that took place from May 6 to May 17, 2017 had an estimated financial impact in the millions for the region.

“Our estimate is that a 10-day boil water notice cost us, our community members between $2.5 to $3.5 million dollars to deal with that,” Marcolin said.

The water advisory left thousands boiling their water and even the local hospital was not spared during the incident, which was reportedly caused by an increase in turbidity.

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“They cancelled surgeries for 10 days and they do not want to get their own treatment plant because then they would be a small water utility and they don’t want to do that, so they rely on us,” Marcolin said.

“Ten days of surgeries is a huge amount when it’s really important,” Marcolin explained.

Schools and seniors’ homes were also significantly impacted, according to the survey’s findings.

“What we heard loud and clear is that the schools were like ‘we have to bag our fountains.’ Maybe the kids were a little bit easier to control but the seniors homes, especially with the dementia patients, they said ‘we can’t watch the sinks. The people they rip off the bags and they don’t read the signs.’ So our most vulnerable community members, they don’t pay attention.”

The boil water advisory in 2017 affected City of Vernon, District of Coldstream, Electoral Areas B & C, some areas of Electoral Area D and Spallumcheen including Stepping Stones.

by Tiffany Goodwein

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