Drinking water quality

[Tootsie]

Anybody remember the cryptosporidium outbreak of 1996 in Kelowna? An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people were very sick from contaminated drinking water. It was right around the time the Thunderfest boat races were scheduled. And that was big tourist money for Kelowna. Hotels were booked solid and that race was NOT about to be cancelled. No way. All the while people were drinking contaminated water.

I'm wondering what the water quality is like now. Many households draw their water supply from Lake Okanagan and with all the debris in the water, all the flooded pumphouses, septic fields/outhouses I wonder if the water quality is being monitored. I sure hope so.

[Fancy]

http://www.kjwc.org/water_quality_alerts/
http://www.rdno.ca/index.php/services/e ... ifications
https://okib.ca/
http://www.rdos.bc.ca/departments/publi ... /naramata/

[onestop67]

I'm wondering what the water quality is like now. Many households draw their water supply from Lake Okanagan and with all the debris in the water, all the flooded pumphouses, septic fields/outhouses I wonder if the water quality is being monitored. I sure hope so.

No. No, households don't draw their water directly from the lake. With the exception of a few that may be beyond city limits. Almost all homes in Kelowna are connected to the city water supply.

If you'e ever seen those homes up close, they are million dollar places, and if they are drawing right from the lake, I guarantee they have the best filtration systems.

Kelowna's water is fine.

Just don't eat the yellow snow...

[JJetson]

The Crypto was from flooding of creeks over farmers fields etc and bringing with it waste from live stock....
I have been drinking anything other than tap water since that outbreak. Thought I was going to die ! We have not been drinking tap water since the creeks flooded.

[LTD]

I'm wondering what the water quality is like now. Many households draw their water supply from Lake Okanagan and with all the debris in the water, all the flooded pumphouses, septic fields/outhouses I wonder if the water quality is being monitored. I sure hope so.

No. No, households don't draw their water directly from the lake. With the exception of a few that may be beyond city limits. Almost all homes in Kelowna are connected to the city water supply.

If you'e ever seen those homes up close, they are million dollar places, and if they are drawing right from the lake, I guarantee they have the best filtration systems.

Kelowna's water is fine.

Just don't eat the yellow snow...

wrong

[Graham Adder]

just a very few years ago, kelowna installed a new world class water treatment plant
They claimed it to be among the cleanest water in the world due to this new technology and treatment facility
The example given was to fill your tub and see how blue the water looked in a white tub
That was apparently due to how incredibly clean the water was
It was said to be so blue, as the finest particulates had been removed and causes a blue tinge when our water is so clean

I tested their theory and filled a tub
It was indeed very blue
I've been under the assumption that we are still using this world class water treatment system, and therefore I drink happily straight from the tap always.
I'm still healthy and not threading a needle with a squirt, so I'm pretty much convinced that Kelowna has good water.

Can anyone with inside or well educated knowledge confirm or deny this?
No need for armchair technicians, thanks.

[gman313]

just a very few years ago, kelowna installed a new world class water treatment plant
They claimed it to be among the cleanest water in the world due to this new technology and treatment facility
The example given was to fill your tub and see how blue the water looked in a white tub
That was apparently due to how incredibly clean the water was
It was said to be so blue, as the finest particulates had been removed and causes a blue tinge when our water is so clean

I tested their theory and filled a tub
It was indeed very blue
I've been under the assumption that we are still using this world class water treatment system, and therefore I drink happily straight from the tap always.
I'm still healthy and not threading a needle with a squirt, so I'm pretty much convinced that Kelowna has good water.

Can anyone with inside or well educated knowledge confirm or deny this?
No need for armchair technicians, thanks.

I was under the same impression as you. upgrades made after crypto issue.

I too have been drinking the city water without issue since

[marooned]

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people were very sick from contaminated drinking water.

Yes, I remember this crypto outbreak. Your claim above is based on what the health region expected the fallout was, and was not measurable, and it seems that time has exaggerated the extent of the issue. The outbreak reportedly affected the Poplar Point intake, and affected primarily downtown as it was the Kelowna city utility impacted. See this map to see where the water system boundaries are today - they may be roughly the same as in 1996:

https://www.kelowna.ca/city-services/wa ... der?t=maps

The outbreak was blamed on French Canadian fruit pickers who set up a beach camp near the Poplar intake (a falsehood), and I spent most of that weekend installing water filter systems for restaurants downtown. Restaurants, pubs, and bars took extraordinary steps to fall into line with filtration guidelines.

The city was packed with tourists, and the only real hiccup was the amount of bottled water that was needed on short notice.

As for water monitoring, here's a passage from Kelowna's 2014 drinking water study located here - my sense is today's monitoring is as great or greater than this passage indicates:

https://www.kelowna.ca/sites/files/1/do ... report.pdf

"Qualified technicians perform more than 1000 tests monthly on source water and water within the
distribution system. To properly assess drinking water quality, samples are taken from the source
(Okanagan Lake) to tap (terminating points) throughout the distribution system. Sample sites include
pump stations, reservoirs, booster stations, valve chambers, and sample stations. The minimum number
of sample sites required for the City is sixty, based on population served; however, typically over one
hundred sites throughout the system are actually sampled on a monthly basis.

The City is required by the Interior Health Authority to contract a private lab (ALS Laboratories) monthly
to perform duplicate testing of total and faecal coliform samples from 24 locations....

The City of Kelowna Water Quality Technicians sample four pumping stations for raw and treated water
two times per week, As well as, approximately 100+ additional sites throughout the distribution system.
Samples are taken from start point to mid point and then end point locations. These water samples are
then analyzed for temperature, colour, pH, turbidity, free and total chlorine."

I don't understand why people are afraid of tap water.

[Graham Adder]

I don't understand why people are afraid of tap water.

marketing for bottled water
people follow leads

it amazes me that even after marketplace type studies/investigations have shown many bottled water companies simply pull from the tap, yet people still feel safer buying it after the processing of bottling, shipping and stocking it than to get it themselves from the very same source(s).

[Tootsie]

I should have been more specific in my first post. I meant that there are communities all along the lake (and not particularily Kelowna) that DO draw their water from the lake (example: houses south of the safe harbour in OK Centre).

[Graham Adder]

I should have been more specific in my first post. I meant that there are communities all along the lake (and not particularily Kelowna) that DO draw their water from the lake (example: houses south of the safe harbour in OK Centre).

For me, on account of knowing Kelowna has this awesome system I will not drink from the tap in any other community right now. That's mainly because I am not familiar, so better safe than sorry.

[Tootsie]

To '"marooned" post above:

The lab techs at KGH and other hospitals up & down the valley were the first ones to know there was an outbreak of some kind. It certainly WAS measurable by all the lab tests being done. Those lab techs were run off their feet processing stool samples for people showing up at the ER. When a hospital goes from a dozen or so stool samples a day to hundreds that's reason for alarm. And it wasn't just KGH. People who had been in Kelowna visiting for the day, having lunch, staying at friends places, etc. And then showing up at the ER at other hospitals. And those were just the people that actually went to the ER. Many people suffered silently on the toilet at home and didn't get stool samples done.
So no - the only hiccup wasn't running out of bottled water.

[AtticSalt]

Lol...CKO does all in house water testing...conflict of intrest ...hmmmm ya think? All other
other water providers have 3rd partys doing the water testing along with thier own in house testing..and around 90% of irregular test results that come back as false positive results are due to operator error in the collection of the water sample. So...if you are doing your own water sample testing...you just keep testing it till you get the results that you need ..the whole system is f%$%@$$
makes me shutter to think that the north end of OK lake is still on septic and all that poop is headed our way...but not to worry the lake is big enough to filter it out.. I know let's build a 35 story high rise Downtown. ...

[What_the]

For the taxes we pay, and Canada holding most of the world's fresh water, it shouldn't taste like s#!t.

[pentona]

just a very few years ago, kelowna installed a new world class water treatment plant
They claimed it to be among the cleanest water in the world due to this new technology and treatment facility
The example given was to fill your tub and see how blue the water looked in a white tub
That was apparently due to how incredibly clean the water was
It was said to be so blue, as the finest particulates had been removed and causes a blue tinge when our water is so clean

I tested their theory and filled a tub
It was indeed very blue
I've been under the assumption that we are still using this world class water treatment system, and therefore I drink happily straight from the tap always.
I'm still healthy and not threading a needle with a squirt, so I'm pretty much convinced that Kelowna has good water.

Can anyone with inside or well educated knowledge confirm or deny this?
No need for armchair technicians, thanks.

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:

The Kelowna city-owned system, which serves 55,000 people, draws from Okanagan Lake. The water is disinfected with chlorine and treated with ultra-violet light to kill bacteria such as the kind that can cause beaver-fever and other intestinal problems.

The South Okanagan city (Penticton) built a $20 million, full-scale water treatment plant in 1996 that, according to the municipality's website, provides a “multiple barrier system consisting of coagulation, flocculation, clarification, filtration, and disinfection”.
In the wake of a cryptosporidium outbreak that sickened thousands of city residents in the mid-1990s and drew national headlines, Kelowna considered a similarly elaborate water treatment system that would have cost $40 million. Council instead opted for the $5 million UV treatment plan.