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The town of Outlook has shut down its water distribution after a staff member discovered the hatch to its distribution reservoir had been tampered with on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat indicates that our water supply had been compromised,\u201d said Outlook\u2019s chief administrative officer, Kevin Trew. <\/p>\n
The town, 77 kms south of Saskatoon, has declared a local state of emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trew said the shutdown leaves approximately 2,500 people without water, including some residents of the neighbouring rural municipality of Rudy.<\/p>\n
Residents are being told to not use tap water \u201cfor any purposes\u201d until further notice and to only use bottled water.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trew said officials immediately reported the tampering incident to the RCMP and the Water Security Agency, which manages Saskatchewan\u2019s water resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know for certain that nothing was added into our treated water,\u201d Trew said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Therefore, under the Water Security Agency\u2019s protocols, \u201cit\u2019s compromised,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A notice from the WSA says residents are warned against trying to treat tap water themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBoiling, freezing, filtering, adding chlorine or other disinfectants or letting the water stand will not make the water safe,\u201d the notice says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trew said the distribution reservoir site is regularly checked and while officials don\u2019t know exactly when the tampering occurred, they suspect it was on Sunday.\u00a0The hatch tampering was discovered at 9:30 a.m. CST on Monday.<\/p>\n
He said the local state of emergency will allow the town to access resources outside the community and is not because local authorities can\u2019t handle the situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The town is disposing of the possibly contaminated water before it can sanitize the reservoirs and then treat new water and flush the system to ensure water is safe for consumption.<\/p>\n
The local state of emergency is expected to run until Dec. 19, as the town has been advised it should give four days for this process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may be rescinded earlier, however we can’t anticipate that at this time,\u201d Trew said.<\/p>\n
Free bottled water is available at the skating rink, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Updates will be provided on the town\u2019s social media pages and officials are going door-to-door to advise residents of the water advisory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
150 bottles of water sold out within 45 minutes<\/p>\n
Hannah Taylor, who owns Outlook AG Foods with her husband, said their grocery store has had lineups throughout Monday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s been a little bit nuts. We’ve gone through a ton of water,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once the water was off in the morning, Taylor said the store sold out of water in 45 minutes. An afternoon delivery of 150 bottles of five gallon jugs also rapidly sold out, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was less than an hour and we were sold out again,\u201d Taylor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The store is running low on jugs and is asking people to bring empty ones with them to fill, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bob Stephenson, who owns the Irrigation Centre Motel in town, said by 10 a.m. a staff member had to try several stores before he was able to find a pharmacy that still had some flats of water left.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stephenson said he\u2019s fortunate that it\u2019s towards the end of his busy season and many guests are checked out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He estimates he\u2019s at only about half capacity, with 12 guests currently. Sorting the drinking water he said is easy, but washing and everything else is “at a standstill.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least I\u2019m not a full house.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-348012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}