Boil water advisory in Halifax from Pockwock Lake Treatment Facility

CITYnews halifax / By Dan Ahlstrand and Mark Hodgins

A boil water advisory is in effect for several communities in the Halifax Regional Municipality, including Peninsular Halifax, Beaver Bank, Middle and Lower Sackville, Bedford, Fall River, Spryfield and surrounding areas.

It is impacting an estimated 201,000 people. Halifax Water says the advisory is due to a planned power outage in the area surrounding the Pockwock Lake Treatment Facility. The outage temporarily halted chlorine disinfection for 30 minutes, allowing a small amount of unchlorinated water into the system.

“So when the power went off our generators kicked on, and when the power came back on later that evening one of our fuses blew on our panel, which caused the power outage at the plant,” said Brittany Smith, senior communications advisor at Halifax Water.

Related:

• Boil water advisory lifted effective immediately, following power failure at facility
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Customers in the affected areas are advised to boil water for at least one minute before drinking, cooking, washing produce, or brushing their teeth.

Residents can check if their property is impacted using an interactive map on Halifax Water’s website.

Smith said Halifax Water is continuing to monitor the water quality and is working closely with the provincial environment department to test water samples.

As for when the advisory would be lifted, Smith said the utility hopes it will be “a couple of days.”

This comes after a similar advisory was sent to residential and commercial customers in July 2024. Following an internal power failure at the plant, a limited amount of unchlorinated water went into the system.

Halifax Water Spokesperson Jeff Myrick told CityNews at the time that two backup generators at the facility didn’t operate correctly after the outage.

“From the July event, part of that, we were just a few days away from completing an installation of a system that would automatically transition the chlorine redundancy system, and that would have avoided this issue,” she said, adding the expectation is that work will still be completed this week.

With files from The Canadian Press.