Water advisory issued for Williams Lake due to manganese

The City of Williams Lake has issued a water quality advisory due to the levels of manganese in its drinking water supply.

Director of Municipal Services, Gary Muraca said it is reflecting a change from Health Canada.

“It’s been determined that it could have possible adverse effects to bottle-fed infants, so they appear to be the most at risk. For baby formula and foods and drinks for young children, I would definitely be considering using a different source.”

In May, Health Canada established a new maximum acceptable concentration (MAC) for manganese in drinking water of 0.12 mg/L. Test results show that the City’s five groundwater wells have between 0.13 to 0.25 mg/L of manganese.

“We saw this coming down a while ago that this was a possibility, and the City of Williams Lake has been preparing with a water management strategy where we’ve been talking about water metering and conservation and putting everything in place for future water treatment which is going to hopefully reduce the amount of manganese in our water,” Muraca said.

“The next steps would be for us to start looking for provincial grants, federal grants that will help bring us back into compliance, so we’ve been preparing for a while and we hope that we’re ahead of the ball a little bit here.”

“Hopefully in the next five years, we’ll have water treatment here.”