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The tap water in roughly 300 West Kelowna, B.C., homes has been deemed safe after the city rescinded a do-not-consume order issued last week.
“I love it,” said Mike Kinnear, one of the impacted residents. “Now I don’t have to go get some big jugs and take them back to the house.”
Residents in the Tallus Ridge and Shannon Woods neighbourhoods went five days without being able to drink their tap water after a security breach at the Tallus reservoir.
However, tested water samples have now all come back negative.
“Interior Health indicated what samples, what testing they wanted done,” said Patrick Pulak, the city’s general manager of operations.
“We were looking for E. coli, coliforms, which are bacterial indicator pathogens. We were also looking for metals. We’re looking for oil and grease, anything that would be considered a contaminant.”
An attempt to open the reservoir’s rooftop hatch triggered an intrusion alarm last Thursday evening.
It prompted a police investigation into the serious offence and who was behind it.
“One of the locks was insecure, however, they did have to drill out a couple of bolts that they thought was another lock in order to gain access, which actually ended up being a sensor,” said West Kelowna RCMP Const. Ginny Folster.
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Global News has learned three youth were responsible. According to police, the trio was initially unaware the building was a reservoir.
“These youths felt that this property was possibly a bunker or a building that they could explore and took the means to attempt to do that,” Folster said.
“Once they found out it was actually a water reservoir, they kind of backed right up and left the property.”
Police say one of the three youth came forward after seeing media reports.
No charges have been laid but the investigation is ongoing.
“My understanding is that they are aware of the severity of the the event and have taken some some lessons from what’s transpired,” Folster said.
The city is now planning to increase security at reservoir sites to mitigate future risks.
“Security fencing, beefier security measures on our access hatches, warning signs and installation of cameras, so those are all the things we’re going to consider,” Pulak said.
Pulak added that one of the first things the city plans to do is to put up more signage around its reservoirs to ensure everyone knowns the facilities hold the community’s water supply and that tampering with it in any way is a criminal offence.
“We’ll sit down and do a debrief on what we can do to prevent this happening again in the future,” Pulak said.
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