Douglas Provincial Park drinking water advisory to remain until tests completed: WSA

The Water Security Agency (WSA) is taking all the necessary steps to make sure the drinking water at Douglas Provincial Park is safe — even though it’s not sure there was anything wrong with the water in the first place.

The agency issued a precautionary drinking water advisory/do-not-use order for the park Friday, saying the water might have been contaminated during an apparent break-in at the park’s water treatment facility.

The advisory said “an unknown substance” may have been added to the water.

On Wednesday, WSA spokesperson Sean Osmar said there wasn’t any proof yet that anything had been put in the water, but that didn’t affect the agency’s response.

“The decision was made to simply flush the system, disinfect it (and) clean it because there could be any number of things that were added,” he said. “Again, we’re speculating here. But you can’t test for everything anyway, so what we did was (decide) we just clean the system, flush it, disinfect it and make sure it’s safe again for use, whether or not anything was ever actually in there.”

Osmar detailed the events that led up to the advisory being issued Friday.

“When park staff discovered that the lock and the hatch cover for the reservoir had been removed and left open, they did a quick visual inspection looking for any possible sheen (on the water) in case there was fuel or oil or something that may have gotten in there,” he said. “But they didn’t see anything.

“They shut the system down right away. Visual inspection can only tell you so much. They shut the system down (and) they notified us as well as park staff.”

The WSA subsequently issued the do-not-use order.

Osmar said even though there wasn’t anything visually wrong with the water, park staff still began to clean and disinfect the system.

“Then they will be flushing the system entirely before refilling it, and we’ll be doing bacteriological sampling of the water once the reservoir is refilled,” he added.

As for when the advisory will be lifted, Osmar said that should happen in the coming days — maybe as early as the weekend. The sampling and testing “takes a few days,” he said.

Douglas Provincial Park is about 110 kilometres northwest of Moose Jaw.

(Submitted to Discover Moose Jaw)