Drinking water quality

[EZGuy]

Excellent timing on this thread Tootsie! I was on the Rail Trail in Lake Country recently and saw the entire septic field and septic tanks at Tween Lakes Campground were submerged. Imagine the spooge leaking into Kamalka Lake from this septic system. And the municipal intake for Kal Lake Water System is a few dozen meters to the north. I'm CERTAIN that this isn't the only location in the valley where septic systems are currently underwater but are there any warnings about this, not in Lake Country, (well except for the 2013 water advisory is still in effect for the Oyama system, snicker, snicker...).

Many residences draw water directly off the lakes in the central Okanagan, these small private intakes may have something like reverse osmosis or filter system but how effective are they really in these extraordinary situations? Even municipal systems may not clear the amount of crap and sediment debris currently entering the water intakes from normally clean lakes.

Bottled water from Costco is running low daily, ever wonder why?

[What_the]

Bottled water from Costco is running low daily, ever wonder why?

Not so much. Chlorine tastes like $#!?

[Embiggen]

I believe that the only city in the valley that opted for any such "World Class" system (filtration and chlorination) was Penticton. Kelowna does not have Filtration as such; only UV treatment and chlorination. When turbidity exceeds a certain limit, bacteria can hide behind particles in the water and those nasty bugs can slip by. In the long run, with Interior Health continually changing the guidelines/goal posts, Kelowna may be required to add Filtration at a huge cost. Here is an exert from a 2014 Daily Courier article:

FYI, that turbidity limit is typically 1.0 NTU for water entering a UV unit. While you're correct that bacteria can be shielded by the turbidity, another issue in that case are protozoa. Chlorine is quite effective at treating bacteria in the water, but ineffective at dealing with protozoa like cryptosporidium and giardia. That's where UV comes in: it's much more effective at inactivating protozoa.

[boojay]

Hi everyone, not sure if anybody still follows this thread, but my family and I just moved to West Kelowna from Saskatchewan where we're used to some of the cleanest, drinkable tap water in the world. We've noticed that the water here is discolored (yellowish/brownish) and have tried running all taps throughout the day, but it stays the same. Obviously, this doesn't look normal so we're wondering if there are any water advisories in effect that we should know about? I haven't been able to find any recent news online so we've just been using boiled, bottled, and distilled water for everything until we know for sure.

Thanks for any info!