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Vancouver May Need to Boil Water Again - Updated.
One topic of conversation in my Subaru last night, while waiting out the 8 hour highway closure, was whether or not we'd end up having to boil our water again after all the snow and rain fall this week. As of right now, it's a big YES if you've got a compromised immune system due to HIV/AIDS or other immuno-deficiencies. Just to be on the safe side.
For the rest of the population, the BC authorities are saying you may want to start stock piling water before the turbidity hits our watershed. Last year's boil advisory ammounted to line ups and limits on bottled water, but no real danger of horrid contaminants... just dirty water.
see CBC.CA story here: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/12/03/bc-fallstorm.html
As for the LOOOOONG highway closure, all I can share is that a lot of eye-opening and very creative snow sculptures lived a full, rich life until the rain this morning melted away thier 8-legged, overly-frisky, eye-lidless marks on highway 1.
UPDATE HERE: Environment Canada as of 8am PST Tuesday - "An additional 5 to 10 cm of snow can be expected"
As of Tuesday morning three rivers in the Vancouver area are at or aboove thier banks and rising at a rate of about 7mm per hour since midnight.
While health authorities never found anything REALLY wrong with our water last time, if you don't like silty fusilli, you might want to keep an ear on the news.
Crowd Power
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Nicole Billard
Vancouver, Canada







Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 16:24 on December 3rd, 2007
Good to know.
at 22:05 on December 3rd, 2007
Nicole Billard, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 03:51 on December 4th, 2007
Nicole, good original stuff.
Please keep us posted on any developments.
at 03:55 on December 4th, 2007
can't you jsut grab some snow and melt it? As long as it's not yellow from beside the highway ;)
at 09:58 on December 4th, 2007
Nicole Billard, thanks for posting this. I just hope people use common sense in dealing with this issue--Vancouverites tend to overreact. As a kid growing up in the Rockies whose water came from a mountain spring/resevoir, we used to have three or four boil water advisories a year. This was not for silt or sediment, but for animal feces (Beaver Fever). So buck up Vancouver.
Thanks for this Nicole--good stuff.