spring runoff season<\/a> getting underway.<\/p>\nAs the longer, warmer days melt snow that flows into the North Saskatchewan River, it brings with it large amounts of sediments, decomposing vegetation and other organic materials that are washed off the land upstream of the city\u2019s two water treatment plants: Rossdale near downtown and E.L. Smith in the city\u2019s southwest.<\/p>\n
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This leads to a change in the quality of the water in the river, giving it a musty or earthy smell. Some people last week also complained of a rotten citrus-type smell to the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really saw an increase in organics (last) Thursday,\u201d Gelinas said, adding that a lot of organic material showed up in the river water over the weekend. As a result, EPCOR had to boost the amount of chemicals needed to make the water safe for use.<\/p>\n
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What ends up in our tap water is chloramine, a disinfectant created by combining chlorine with a small amount of ammonia.<\/p>\n
EPCOR said it adds both chemicals at its water treatment plants to form chloramines, which stay in the water longer than free chlorine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why people are noticing it. Usually, in about three to five days, we should really see this smell start to diminish and Edmontonians should hopefully get their water back the way they\u2019re used to having it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tThe North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, Alta. on Monday, March 23, 2026.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tGlobal News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
EPCOR said when spring runoff starts to show up, it also adjusts its process by adding powdered activated carbon in the first stage of water treatment. EPCOR said the activated carbon helps remove odour-causing compounds and is then removed by sedimentation.<\/p>\n
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In the meantime, there are several things that people who can\u2019t stand the taste or smell right now can do.<\/p>\n
EPCOR said people can run their cold water taps for about three minutes or so to flush the lines in the morning or when they haven\u2019t been used in six or more hours.<\/p>\n
Residents can also use carbon filter products like a Brita pitcher or make sure the filters in their fridge water dispensers are still in good shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr, if you like lemon in your water, you could add a slice of lemon. It kind of helps with the taste or the smell that you may be experiencing currently,\u201d Gelinas said.<\/p>\n
One thing that likely won\u2019t work?\u00a0Leaving water to air out. While water containing free chlorine will off-gas in about a day, chloramine is more stable and can take weeks to dissipate naturally, requiring chemical neutralizers or special filters (like activated carbon) to remove.<\/p>\n
EPCOR has teams that test the city\u2019s tap water multiple times a day, including a team that analyzes the odour.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do smelling panels at the plant. We also have a home sniffing program where we have over 300 volunteers throughout the city that sniff their water every day that provides us feedback,\u201d Gelinas said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cObviously, right now, they\u2019re providing us some feedback that they\u2019re smelling chlorine higher than usual. So we\u2019re changing our process to make sure that this is addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several things are pretty much guaranteed during spring in Edmonton and that includes tap water that tastes and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,215563,23752,215564,295,215562,215565,215566],"class_list":{"0":"post-556369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-chloramine","11":"tag-edmonton","12":"tag-edmonton-water","13":"tag-environment","14":"tag-epcor","15":"tag-north-saskatchewan-river","16":"tag-spring-runoff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556369","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=556369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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