The Northwestern Health Unit was still advising Emo residents to boil their water before drinking it as of press time today.
The advisory was issued Friday afternoon after traces of bacteria were found during a routine test last Tuesday at the water treatment plant there.
The health unit has indicated it expected the water to be declared safe to drink again shortly but two consecutive tests must come back clean before the advisory is lifted.
Tests taken Sunday have come back clean and results from samples taken Monday are expected to be available by tomorrow morning.
But until the final results come in, Emo residents are urged to bring water to a rolling boil for at least a minute before drinking it. The health unit also is advising that anyone with suffering nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea to consult their family physician.
Meanwhile, an erroneous boil-water advisory poster in Emo, which initially had raised concern with the health unit on Monday, has since been found to be the result of a mix-up.
The sign, which was posted at the Can-Asian Restaurant read, “Boil water advisory has been lifted. The Northwestern Health Unit has been notified the water is safe to drink”–a message contrary to the unsafe water advisories posted around Emo since Friday.
“We have a sense of what happened. It was done accidentally,” said Bob Jeffery, who is responsible for health unit activities in the Emo area.
He noted the incorrect flyer had somehow gotten mixed up with the correct ones and posted by a volunteer who didn’t notice the different wording.
“We’re quite satisfied with the explanation. There’s a lot of people involved when we do something like put up the advisories and mistakes can happen,” admitted Jeffery.
But he did not say how an “advisory lifted” poster came to be mixed up in the shuffle in the first place.
While the health unit is resting easier now, early news of the incorrect poster raised some suspicions–and the health unit contacted the O.P.P. to look into it.
“It had the potential to be serious,” Dr. Peter Sarsfield, CEO and chief medical officer of the health unit, said yesterday.
“[Malicious intent] was a big concern [on Monday],” echoed Jeffrey.
But S/Sgt. Steve Shouldice of the local O.P.P., which determined the posting of the false message to be an accident, said if it was a case of deliberate malice, there would have been serious consequences.
“If it’s an altered document, and it has the original signature copied to it, that’s forgery,” he stressed. “If someone commits an act that may result in harm to someone, that’s mischief.”