About 40,000 residents in the city of Saint John will have to boil water for drinking again this week until at least Friday. While two water orders in February were caused by heavy rainfalls that clouded the water, the current problem was caused by the failure of a chlorine injection line at a water treatment facility. This poses a question. How safe is the water in Saint John?
Water is supplied to the city from Spruce Lake and Loch Lomond Lake and is susceptible to contamination from animals, human dumping, and roads. Motorboats are allowed on operate on Saint John's water supply. The fuel additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether, is just one of the chemicals Saint John Water officials worry could pollute the lakes, giving the water a disgusting smell and taste. It's also thought potentially cause cancer. High levels of trihalomethanes were detected in the water of residents living on the west side of the city this past year. Also, lead has been detected in the water from old pipes. Chlorinating the water is the only protection that is in place currently. The current system has no safeguards if the chlorination fails, a medical health officer in Saint John recently stated. We have an aging infrastructure that needs to be fixed. Also we have heavy industry in the city that potentially could end up in our drinking water supply from soil and runoffs.
There is also an issue with non-drinking water contamination in Saint John. The City of Saint John has one of the oldest municipal water and sewage systems in North America. It has the status as the only Canadian city to have untreated sewage running in open creeks through its core.. Close to half of the city’s sewage simply flows untreated through raw sewage outfall pipes directly into the Saint John Harbour, Marsh Creek or the St. John River.
For residents of Saint John this is unacceptable, especially where we pay taxes for water and sewage and have the highest municipal tax rate in the province of New Brunswick. Millions of dollars from the municipal, provincial and federal governments are needed to fix this problem.