Bottled water cleared from store shelves after boil-water advisory closes Halifax daycares, cafés

A number of daycares and businesses in the Halifax area were closed Tuesday and some grocery store shelves had been cleared of bottled water due to a boil-water advisory that affected a large swath of the municipality.

The advisory followed an internal electrical issue at a water treatment facility that serves 201,000 people in the municipality. It covered Halifax, Bedford, Spryfield, Timberlea, Hammonds Plains, Beaver Bank, Middle and Lower Sackville, Windsor Junction, Herring Cove and parts of Fall River before it was lifted Wednesday morning.

"Taking water out of the equation really messes things up in a lot of ways that you don't really realize," Charlotte Ashley, owner of Trident Booksellers & Cafe, told CBC News on Tuesday.

Trident, located on Hollis Street in Halifax, was closed Tuesday because of the boil advisory. Ashley said coffee is a big seller at the café and there was no way she could make hot drinks because her espresso machine is connected directly to the water source.

"We can't put boiled water into the machine ... which also has the foaming wand, so we can't foam milk, we can't heat up tea or hot chocolate. Water comes out of the foaming wand, so we'd be contaminating anything we'd make."

Ashley said not having water ends up costing her business about $1,000 a day.

During the advisory, Halifax Water recommended people boil their water for at least one minute before consuming it or using it for food preparation.

Filtering water would not suffice, it said, and water should be boiled under the following circumstances:

• Drinking.
• Preparing infant formula.
• Making ice cubes or juices.
• Washing fruits or vegetables.
• Cooking.
• Brushing teeth.
• Any other activity requiring human consumption.

The advisory was meant to prevent adverse health effects from drinking unchlorinated water, Nova Scotia regional medical officer of health Dr. Monika Dutt told The Canadian Press, adding that people who are immunocompromised or infants using formula were most at risk.

Neither the provincial Environment Department nor the city's utility found traces of viruses or bacteria in the water, Dutt said Tuesday in an interview. "No actual tests have shown that currently there is a risk to the public; however, as a precaution, they put [the advisory] in place."

The advisory, issued Monday evening, forced some child-care centres to close Tuesday.

A number of Tim Hortons locations were closed Tuesday morning. The Bedford coffee shop at Mill Cove said it planned to open at noon on Tuesday, but would only be serving hot drinks, not cold or iced drinks.

Hospitals, including both QEII Health Sciences Centre campuses and the Cobequid Community Health Centre in Lower Sackville, told The Canadian Press they were using waterless bath products to clean patients, and urged anyone with open skin wounds to avoid showers.

Nova Scotia Health spokesperson Brendan Elliott also said "a couple of dozen" endoscopy procedures were cancelled.

Customers could be seen lining up outside Sobeys on Mumford Road early Tuesday morning. Later in the morning, the shelves were cleared of bottled water.

Jeff Myrick, communications manager for Halifax Water, said Monday's midday outage and an internal electrical issue at the J.D. Kline (Pockwock Lake) water treatment facility allowed some unchlorinated water to enter the system for about 30 minutes. Crews initially tried to flush it out of the system but when that wasn't successful, they notified the public, he said. 

He said that water had been screened and had gone through other cleaning processes, it just wasn't chlorinated. He said chlorination kills off leftover bacteria and bugs.

"So normally if we have an issue with the pump or with power surge inside the facility, the circuits will trip and then a backup generator will kick in and provide the electricity needed to run the facility," Myrick told CBC Radio's Information Morning Nova Scotia on Tuesday.

"Unfortunately [Monday], whatever happened, we did not have a backup generator that went into place and which caused the situation."

Systems tested frequently

Myrick said the utility is investigating what went wrong. He said the backup system is checked regularly and tested "at least" once a month.

"That means making sure the generator is working, but also all the switches that help trigger the generator are also working, so we're a bit baffled right now by what happened, but we're looking into it," he said.

He said the unchlorinated water would dissipate as it runs through the system.

WATCH | Halifax engineer weighs in on boil-water advisory:

Halifax engineer explains why boil advisory shouldn't be too concerning

5 months ago

Duration 2:15

Graham Gagnon is an engineer and director of the Centre for Water Resources at Dalhousie University. Watch his interview with Tom Murphy.

Graham Gagnon, an engineer and the director of the Centre for Water Resources Studies at Dalhousie University, said Pockwock Lake is an excellent water source that has very few inputs, meaning it's far from industrial and agricultural waste. He said inputs into Pockwock Lake would be from wildlife in the forest.

Gagnon said chlorination, while important, is more like a final polishing step in water treatment.

A spokesperson for the municipality said water would not be distributed as it could still be prepared by residents for safe consumption.

Sybil Fineberg, owner of Hali Deli in Halifax, said business was very quiet on Tuesday.

Fineberg said once she got the notification alert Monday night, her first thought was getting to the restaurant and boiling lots of water so it would be on hand. She said she noticed a lot of people out buying bottles of water at the grocery store in the morning.

"We gotta be conscientious of what we're cooking. Most of the things that we are cooking, the water gets boiled first anyway. But I was more concerned about the front of the house here," Fineberg told CBC News.

Bobbi-Lynn Keating, executive director of the Peter Green Hall Children's Centre, said her first concern was safety. 

Keating said the Halifax centre looks after 120 children. She said there needs to be clean water to drink and use for washing things like bottles and produce. The daycare, like others impacted by the boil order on Tuesday, opted to close to prepare. Keating said staff brought in kettles from home and those with cars went on a hunt to find bottles of water.

"At the end of it all, I think there's probably 1,000 bottles of water we ended up getting so we're into it for about $650, around there."

Nova Scotia's Environment Department said in an email that child-care centres could open as long as they followed the boil-water advisory instructions.

"That being said, no water play or activities where water can be consumed accidentally," the department told CBC News.

The province's Department of Community Services told CBC News in an email that it would be funding service providers that run shelters, outreach teams and other services for people experiencing homelessness to cover the "increased costs of bottled water during the advisory."

Contingency plans were also in place to deal with the boil-water advisory at long-term care facilities, said the province's Department of Seniors and Long-Term Care.