With the third boil-water advisory of 2007 looming over local taps, Coun. Greg Gardner said Squamish residents could become dangerously indifferent to the warnings.
Despite the advisories, municipal water has tested safe to drink throughout the year. The suggestion to boil water for two minutes tends to happen when turbidity in the Stawamus River, usually following heavy rains, makes it impossible to prove the water is disinfected.
According to Len Clarkson of Vancouver Coastal Health, the most recent advisory came after a power outage shut off the town's chlorination system for several hours.
Gardner said this precautionary warning could lead people to brush off water advisories.
"If we do have a serious problem in the water how are the people in this community going to respond? It's almost like The Boy Who Cried Wolf," he said.
Gardner has stopped taking them seriously himself.
"I've never boiled water in this community. I've never put it in a pot and boiled it."
Operations manager Gord Prescott said the district is required to stick to the current advisory system based on provincial health regulations. But in the face of a more troubling water problem, he said the message would be clear.
"It would be a completely different program that would be announced. Be assured that if the water was unsafe that would be the announcement."
Coun. Corinne Lonsdale said in lieu of the frequent advisories, which also happened in March and October, the district could hand deliver notices explaining the turbidity issue to residents.
"I think we're frightening people more than we need to...I think the thing we want to drill into people's minds is that if we have heavy rainfall, boil your water just as a precaution."
Prescott said he is optimistic that boil-water advisories could become a thing of the past in two weeks when three new pumps are be installed at Powerhouse Springs. The new pumps will give staff the chance to fix those that are currently malfunctioning. He explained there are four pumps at Powerhouse Springs, programmed turn off at different levels as the result of different initiatives to stop rapid deterioration of the resource.
"The system has been amended on the fly over the years. Now there's a conflict in well sensors. One says it's too low, stop pumping. Another says keep pumping. You get a cycle of off/on, off/on," he said.
Prescott noted several of those messages results in an error, which tells the pumps to reduce their draw by half. At these times, surface water is pulled from the Stawamus River to compensate. If that water is turbid, a boil-water advisory is sent out.Reprogramming of the current wells in coming weeks could mean the Stawamus River is tapped into less often.When these advisories do happen, the district faces the growing challenge of getting boil-water advisories out to the public in an age when many radio listeners are switching over to digital music.
"We've got to figure out an effective way of getting the information out there," said Coun. Heintzman.
When the advisory came over the long weekend, district staff managed to deliver notices to drug stores and grocery stores, while faxing doctors and dentists in community. Staff also put letters in residents' mailboxes yesterday, although they are still waiting for Canada Post's permission to do this.
Council also discussed creating a subscription list of emails so community members could automatically be kept up to date on local water issues.
