Wild Rose Public Schools officials hope to have a new water filtration system at Condor School sometime in September.
In June, Condor School had to be closed down for a couple of days when routine testing revealed unsafe levels of bacteria in the water. The school which has 150 students from kindergarten to Grade 7 is located just north of Hwy 11 around 50 km west of Red Deer.
“All the way along our objective has been to make sure we don’t run into this problem again,” said Wild Rose Superintendent Brian Celli said.
At the moment the school division is waiting for suppliers to get the parts for the filtration system to them so that it can be installed.
Celli said once the parts arrive it will likely take a day to install the filtration system, a couple of days to adjust it and then a couple of weeks to monitor it and wait for the testing results to come back.
Until that time, water fountains at the school have been sealed up and students are to be provided with bottled water and hand sanitizer to use after they have washed their hands with water at the school.
Celli said teachers will remind students to use hand sanitizer and water will continue to be tested on a weekly basis.
“We’re not going to take chances with their kids,” Celli said.
“We’ve followed that right from the very beginning. We would have liked to have a faster timeline on this too, but we are subject to other companies timelines too.”
Celli said during the summer two old wells were dug up to ensure they had been abandoned and closed off properly.
One well had been abandoned properly and one hadn’t been, but now both of them have been closed off properly.
The current well was blown out into to ensure nothing had died in the well to cause the problem and it was found to be clean, Celli said. Last June, the wells were shock chlorinated to flush them.
Celli said over the summer only small trace amounts of coliform bacteria have been found in the system but school administrators want to take every precaution to ensure the safety of students.
Coliforms are a type of bacteria found in the digestive tracts of humans and animals, as well as in soil and plant material, and when found in water can indicate that it is unsafe to drink. No tests have found e-coli at the school.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com