The City of Prince Rupert has been on a boil water advisory for several months, which the city says is necessary to modernize the aging infrastructure.
Community frustration is growing as the city enters it’s fifth month under a boil water advisory. As frustration builds, residents are campaigning for a solution. A petition urging the city to end charges for non-potable water has been circulating on several community social media groups.
While the city officials acknowledge the frustration, they want to use funding to find a permanent solution rather than temporary relief, said Prince Rupert mayor Herb Pond.
“We are on about a 10-year march to get from a water system that was failing to a water system that’s going to be state-of-the-art and we’re halfway through that. We lose about 40 per cent of our water into the ground through all the different leaks that we have. So, the decision was made early in this council’s term to not pursue water filtration, but rather to fix the pipes first because there’s no point in treating the water and putting really good water into bad pipes.”
The city has been working to replace many pipes around the city but because they are unable to segregate pipe flow if water quality drops in one area due to construction impacts it will spread throughout the pipe network. The BIG Project has seen many pipes replaced already including those of high priority.
The boil water advisory is a consequence of the pipe replacement, said Pond
“We’ve got the big project underway. It’s about halfway done on the pipe replacement. The nature of replacing the dam caused us to go on boil water for a long time. We were using the secondary source of water. And the nature of replacing the pipes has caused us to go on to boil water more than we’d certainly like to. But there’s no way to get from where we were to where we will be without going through this uncomfortable process.”
The boil water advisory remains in place as pipe work continues.
