'It was so disgusting': Sask. woman says taps ran brown during water advisory in Assiniboia

Jennifer Bauer was doing her dishes when she noticed something was wrong with the water coming out of her tap.

It was brown.

"I was like, 'what the heck?'" she said.

"I can't even describe it. It was so disgusting."

That's when the mother of six found out that her town of Assiniboia had been placed on a precautionary drinking water advisory the day before.

Assiniboia is in southern Saskatchewan, 135 kilometres southwest of Regina.

In a note to its residents in early September, the town said the advisory was issued because of "turbidity exceedance," meaning the town could not ensure the safety of the drinking water supply at all times.

Turbidity refers to the water being cloudy, thick with suspended matter or opaque, the town said online. 

"Despite the good efforts of the operator to maintain safe drinking water through treatment and disinfection, there has been a deviation from normal operation, causing higher than normal turbidity levels," said the Water Security Agency (WSA) in a letter to the town on Sept. 2.

"An operational upset such as high turbidity may compromise the treatment process allowing for the possibility that the potable water may have become contaminated."

A precautionary drinking water advisory means there may be problems with the quality of the drinking water. Under such an advisory, residents are asked to boil water before consuming it. However, it is classified differently than the more serious category of an "emergency boil water order."

Emergency boil water orders are only issued when a confirmed threat to public health exists, like with the recent E. coli contamination in Roche Percee, according to the agency.

Bauer said there was no way she would let her family drink the brown water — boiled or not.

"I have never seen it this bad before," she said.

"I went on a rampage, went out, picked a whole bunch [of bottled water] up. The first round of water was like $100. And it ticks me off because it's not like my water costs any less for the town."

For the single mom, spending extra money on water was a big financial hit.

It became hard finding water at the stores in town, she said. Some people drove as far as Moose Jaw, about an hour's travel, to find some.

The Town of Assiniboia did not respond to any CBC requests for comment about the drinking water advisory.

It posted online that the discoloured water was the result of the sediment levels being higher than normal due to the lack of rain and the high temperatures over the summer.

In 2019, the town posted on Facebook that it was upgrading its water treatment plant to make sure all its residents had "clean and safe water."

There have been 17 boil water advisories in Assiniboia over the last five years, according to the WSA. Four were related to turbidity levels and 13 to pressure loss, meaning either equipment failure or planned maintenance.

The most recent advisory was lifted in mid-September, the agency said in an email.

Drinking water advisories in rural Saskatchewan

As of Saturday, more than 70 precautionary drinking water advisories were active across the province in communities regulated by the WSA or Saskatchewan's Ministry of Environment.

This number is consistent with previous years, but does not include First Nations, or smaller systems like camps that are regulated by a regional health authority, said Patrick Boyle, a spokesperson with the WSA.

"A lot of it [has] to do with infrastructure issues," said Patrick Boyle.

"Typically smaller communities have some struggles with that, and whether that's a filtration system or some other mechanical issue that needs an upgrade."

While Assiniboia's drinking water advisory was lifted within two weeks, other communities have been living with them for more than a year.

One of them is the village of Prelate. The community has been on a precautionary advisory since May 2021, and was still on the province's list as of Saturday.

Struggles began when the community upgraded its water treatment plant.

"Ever since the new system has been in, our water standards, I guess, had to meet different criteria than what we were used to," said Deputy Mayor Ryan Marcotte.

"The new system never ever did meet [them]. So the company that engineered it has never done anything about that."

Despite the duration of the drinking advisory, the deputy mayor said the water they have been serving to the public met criteria. But the results coming back from testing from one of the filters did not, he said.

That "is kind of unfortunate because no one is drinking right from off the filters, they're drinking from what's coming out of the tower," he said.

"We spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to get compliance," he said.

The village has now asked for its precautionary advisory to be lifted, but looking back at the last two years, Marcotte said the village was hoping for more advice and support from the WSA's officers.

"Our role as the regulator is not to provide advice to those communities from an engineering perspective," said Boyle.

"The communities themselves would have to hire an engineering consultant to look at that, and that's the practice across ... Saskatchewan."

Long-term drinking water advisories in Sask. First Nations

Despite a promise by the federal Liberals to end long-term boil water advisories on First Nations reserves by 2021, there are still six long-term drinking water advisories in effect in Saskatchewan as of Tuesday.

According to the federal government's website, 20 long-term advisories have been lifted in First Nations across the province since 2015. However, there hasn't been much progress since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Deon Hassler, president of the Saskatchewan First Nations Water Association.

"I really wish I could say there has been changes, but since COVID hit all our projects came to a halt," he said.

"They're slowly starting up again. And so maybe we might have some communities that are going to start digging this fall, maybe, for a new water plant."

Aside from his role with the association, Hassler also works with the File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council training water operators in different First Nations.

Hassler said he is still dealing with a lot of repairs, trying to prevent more boil water advisories.

Lack of funding and underpaid water operators on reserve are just some of the issues, he said.

"The [water operators'] salary is our biggest concern," he said.

"We can't get our operators to come in and replace our retired workers in some of the communities because it really doesn't pay that much."

Climate change is another problem.

"Some of our wells kind of dried up and caused some problems with either sand grit or other sediments getting into the filtration system," he said.

Cisterns also remain a concern on some First Nations.

As long as some communities in his area depend on cisterns, they will remain on a boil water advisory, regardless how good the water is when it comes out of the plant, according to Hassler.