By Andrew de Souza

City to begin cleaning reservoir

Feb 15, 2012 | 3:41 PM

The city is ready to begin the first of several steps in the process to flush the water distribution system of contaminants and sediments.

At a press conference Wednesday, city manager Robert Cotterill and director of public works Colin Innes announced the first step of that plan would begin.

“Last week a five point plan was outlined that identified the steps that would be necessary before the boil water advisory could lifted,” said Cotterill. “Starting Thursday work will begin to clean the River Street Reservoir.”

Innes said a robot contracted from operators in Quebec would be used to clear the sediment while at the same time allowing the reservoir to remain in operation.

Time and cost estimates

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There are several steps the city has to take in order to be ready to flush the entire water distribution.

After the reservoir is cleaned, the lines leading to and from it must be cleaned and sanitized, and so must the city’s other two reservoirs.

Next the city has to ensure that all its filters at the plant are ready to run at peak efficiency in order to ensure clean water is being used to flush the lines.

Once all that was complete, they could then flush the lines.
However, before that would be allowed, the province would have to approve the city’s plan to do so.

“There’s a lot of work that’s occurring and we’ve been making some good progress,” said Innes.

“Our intent is to get the full flushing plan to (the ministry of) environment so we can get an approval on that.”

Because there was the added level of oversight, Cotterill said he was hesitant to put a definite time of completion on the project.

“We’re still in the three-to-four week range and we haven’t been able to lower that expectation at this time,” he said.

“We still have to see what happens over the next week or so. We also have to have our plan approved the province and until that’s done I don’t want to speculate on a timeframe.”

He was willing, however, to give a cost estimate of the project. He said, not counting water wasted since the water advisory was first put into place, the cost would be between $300,000 – $500,000.

Residents may notice chlorine

Innes said as part of the attempts to clean the system of giardia, the city had been putting increased, but safe levels of chlorine.

He said because of that, residents could notice an increased presence of the chemical in their water.

“Likely over the next couple of weeks the water will have more of a chlorine odour,” he said. “And that’s part of the disinfection process.

“The chlorine levels that we would be seeing in the system would still be acceptable for people.”

No reported cases

Meanwhile, the health region also took park in the press conference.

Health inspection manager Paul Ross said sufficient time had passed for the contaminating protozoa, giardia, to have incubated in any potentially infected people.

“Public health’s monitoring the number of patients going to medical clinics and the Victoria Hospital with gastro-intestinal issues. Pharmacies have also been requested to provide information,” he said.

“To date there have been no positive tests for giardia or cryptosporidium in the samples sent.”

Ross said there had been almost 80 such samples.

Ross did say people should continue to talk to their doctors should any gastro-intestinal ailments come up.

For all the latest information from the city, including the most recent water test results, CLICK HERE.

adesouza@panow.com