City of Winnipeg under a boil-water advisory after positive E. coli tests

The entire city of Winnipeg was under a boil-water advisory Tuesday night after routine sampling turned up some potentially harmful bacteria in the municipal water supply.

The city, which has a population of about 700,000, said the move was precautionary after six water samples showed the presence of E. coli and coliform at extremely low levels.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we are issuing it citywide,” Mayor Brian Bowman told a hastily called news conference Tuesday evening.

“Hopefully we will find out that these were false positives tomorrow and very soon thereafter we will be able to lift this notice, but we do need to be cautious.”

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority initially said the advisory only applied to the area of the city east of the Red River.

Bowman and Geoff Patton, acting director of the Water and Waste Department, said they weren’t aware of any reports of illness but said the health authority would be better suited to answer that.

Melissa Hoft, a spokeswoman for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said they would not be directly answering questions about the situation on Tuesday night but would be available on Wednesday. She said the authority was working on issuing a statement later in the evening.

Residents are being told to bring tap water to a boil for at least one minute before using it to drink, make food or infant formula or brush teeth.

But it is not necessary to boil tap water for other household purposes, such as laundry or washing dishes.

Adults and children who can avoid swallowing water can use it to bathe. All commercial buildings, public and private, including restaurants, daycares and rest homes, are under the boil-water advisory.

All city pools remain open and the city says they are safe to use.

City officials said the water samples were part of routine testing and were collected Monday at 39 public locations. The results became available on Tuesday.

Patton said the results are puzzling, adding some showed the presence of both coliform and chlorine. He said those two don’t go together and it suggests the samples may be “false positives,” or incorrect indications of the presence of bacteria.

“It’s hard to understand — we see clean results upstream and downstream of the locations, and then we see this unusual sampling. So what has happened? That is what we’re looking to do. We’ve taken additional samples this morning that were distributed through the entire city and we’re expediting those samples to make sure everything is safe.”

Officials didn’t specify what type of E. coli was found in the samples. The presence of E. coli in water indicates recent fecal contamination and may indicate the possible presence of disease-causing pathogens, such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites. The Canadian Drinking Water Quality Guideline for total coliforms is zero per 100 millilitres of water and zero for E. coli.

Patton said the results of the samples included many with one coliform-forming unit per 100 millilitres and one that was higher, possibly nine.

While five of the six positive tests were east of the river, one was in the city’s southwest and Bowman said that led the city to expand its warning.

“This is a public health issue, this is the City of Winnipeg’s water supply, we’re confident in the safety of the water and we’re resampling to prove this out,” Patton said.

Winnipeg’s water is piped from Shoal Lake, Ont., about 150 kilometres east of the city, and treated at a plant near the Decon Reservoir east of the city. The $300-million facility opened in 2009 and can treat up to 400 million litres of water a day.

Seven people died and thousands were sickened in Walkerton, Ont., in May 2000 when E. coli got into the water system. An inquiry found cost-cutting by the government of former Tory premier Mike Harris contributed to the tragedy.

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