The Chatham-Kent Public Utilities Commission is happy with its handling of a broken watermain in Ridgetown, which led to a boil water advisory last month.
PUC Chair and Chatham-Kent Mayor Randy Hope says all necessary protocols were followed appropriately.
"The PUC is responsible to do certain things and that action was taken effectively and efficiently and as quickly as possible making sure that we deal with the leak, but more important as a notification process, it gets transferred over to the public health unit," says Hope, recognizing there's always room for improvement. "Something of this magnitude, when you hear concerns from the general public, you go back and say 'okay, we did really good, but how can we do better?'"
The PUC and Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit are set to meet March 26 for a debrief of the Ridgetown situation.
The watermain break was being monitored in the daytime hours of February 25 before the health unit determined a boil water advisory was necessary at about 11:30pm. About 30 PUC staff hand-delivered roughly 1,100 notices to residents around 5am the next day while notification to media from the health unit wasn't made for another ten hours after issuing the advisory. The boil water advisory in Ridgetown ended February 28.