ERIN – Before a boil water advisory for Hillsburgh residents was lifted last week, Erin fire chief Jim Sawkins was already praising the town’s response during a July 13 council meeting.
“Our first priority last night was to get the message out, to get them to stop drinking their water,” the chief said of department’s July 12 response to the advisory.
“Before I left last night, after buying them seven pizzas, I said, ‘You know what, you should be proud, the town is proud. You guys came together very quickly and did this,’” Sawkins told council of a conversation he had with the 25 volunteer firefighters who hand-delivered notices to affected residents.
A boil water advisory was put in place by Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health (WDGPH) on the evening of July 12 after lab testing revealed E. coli in a routine water sample collected by the town’s water operator, the Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA).
After subsequent lab testing, water was deemed safe for consumption by the health unit and the advisory was lifted on Friday night.
“But it’s not just about the firefighters,” the chief stressed last Thursday, heaping praise onto town staff and councillors.
“We dealt with an emergency last night, the town, as a team,” he added.
“Emergency management,” the chief continued to say, “is about taking a bad day and trying to make sure that the effect is as least as possible to the public that are experiencing [it].”
The town received public backlash for its haphazard response to a two-day Erin boil water advisory in March, prompting councillor Bridget Ryan to motion for a staff report dissecting what went wrong.
Council carried Ryan’s motion in April, and Sawkins reported back to council with a “post-incident analysis” at last week’s meeting, putting forward recommendations on how the town can do better.
Asked by councillor John Brennan to compare the response in Hillsburgh to the one in Erin, the chief characterized it as “night and day.”
Sawkins recounted receiving an email first from councillor Jamie Cheyne about the advisory at 5:34pm and then CAO Nathan Hyde at 6:19pm on July 12.
Responding to questions from the Advertiser, Cheyne stated in an email that he messaged the fire chief and the CAO because water operator Geordie Wheeler “went above and beyond to contact me to ensure the message was received as soon as possible due to the nature of the advisory.”
“The Wheeler and Cheyne families have been friends since long before the cell phone,” Cheyne added.
Sawkins told council that by 8:25pm, firefighters were returning to Station 50 with notices having been hand-delivered to every resident affected. He enunciated the words “every resident.”
Chief responds to criticism
Though the fire department has received positive feedback from the community, according to Sawkins, it wasn’t all favourable.
Residents complained about a lack of initial information provided, and voiced concern about the time it took to get the boil water advisory implemented.
Sawkins said there were complaints that notices didn’t provide “the ‘who, what, when, where, why and how.’”
“Well, you’re not going to get that in an initial notification,” he asserted. “It’s not going to happen.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t receive, nor did the town … receive an actual boil water advisory from the [Ontario Clean Water Agency] until 7:16pm,” Sawkins explained, adding, “we were well underway getting things going by then.”
Despite downplaying the criticism, he conceded there are areas for improvement, such as the need for a pre-made notification template for future incidents.
“Yes, there’s a lot of things that we can still improve on, we have to be open-minded and to be able to consider that,” the chief told council.
Sawkins said in the future, calls should be made directly, rather than emails sent and leaving it to chance that staff will check their inbox, as was the case last week.
Councillor Bridget Ryan said she believed the situation was “really well handled” and lauded the fire department’s “quick response.”
However Ryan suggested the town date notices — “Those ones that are hanging around next Saturday and Sunday, we don’t want it to create undue alarm” — and she noted it was difficult to find information on the town’s website.
Sawkins addressed the website earlier in the meeting, saying he had a conversation with Erin county councillor Jeff Duncan about how difficult it appeared for “Joe public to … get to the actual boil water advisory.”
An “emergency notification” tab has since been added on the town’s website, along the top navigation bar.
The chief also said there was “a lot of concern” about the timing of the boil water advisory being implemented the day after the sample was taken.
“I had an in-depth discussion with [the] OCWA today; at no time was the public put at risk,” Sawkins claimed.
(An OCWA official did not answer a question from a reporter about whether public health was ever at risk.)
Council heard that six water samples are taken each week in Hillsburgh; four from pumphouses, and two throughout the rest of the system.
In the summer, the two latter samples are taken from Upper Canada Drive and Spruce Street, according to Sawkins.
The Spruce Street sample contained E. coli and came from what the chief called a “dead-end hydrant.”
The chief told council water at the location is stagnant.
“So that area … where there are no residents, is exactly where the sample was taken and the E. coli was exposed,” he said.
‘Immediate notifications were made’
OCWA regional manager Caralynn McRae confirmed in an email to the Advertiser that Upper Canada Drive and Spruce Street “are included” in Hillsburgh sampling locations.
McRae previously confirmed to the newspaper that a Spruce Street sample contained the potentially life-threatening bacteria.
McRae wrote that samples are taken from dead-end streets to provide insight into what’s happening at the end-point of a water system.
Asked why the advisory was not implemented until the day after the sample was taken, McRae explained that when it comes to testing, E. coli samples have a 24-hour incubation period in the lab.
“Once the sample at Spruce Street came back detecting E. coli, immediate notifications were made by both the laboratory and by [OCWA],” she wrote.
McRae noted WDGPH was made aware of the presence of E. coli in Hillsburgh’s water system at 3:17pm on July 12.
She stated the water operator “takes any adverse sampling results seriously … and follows strict protocols and regulations to prevent, detect, and address any contamination by E. coli in its water supply and distribution systems.”
According to WDGPH spokesperson Danny Williamson, the health unit received notification from OCWA around 4:30pm on July 12 — over an hour after McRae says the notification was sent.
In a followup email to WDGPH, spokesperson Maria Simpson confirmed, on July 18, that the health unit did in fact receive notification from OCWA over an hour earlier than originally stated.
“Following a risk assessment by WDGPH, a verbal call to the [water] operator was initiated at 4:49pm to issue a formal boil water advisory,” Simpson wrote.
According to McRae, OCWA received the formal advisory from the local pubic health unit at 6:03pm, almost three hours after the water operator originally notified the health unit of the presence of E. coli in the water sample.
Even later still, according to Erin spokesperson Lavina Dixit and fire chief Sawkins, was when the town received the health unit’s formal advisory, relayed by OCWA at 7:16pm — just under four hours from the time OCWA notified public health.
Additional sampling done on July 12 and 13, at the dead-end Spruce Street location and upstream of Spruce at Upper Canada Drive, revealed water samples without E. coli, according to McRae.
The advisory was lifted by WDGPH on the night of July 14.
