After 6 days without running water, end in sight for Lincoln mini-home park | CBC News
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Residents of a mini-home park in the Fredericton area spent the holidays without running water — an outage that persisted for six days.
It isn’t the first time Tamarack Estates in Lincoln has seen water issues, said Lacey Phillips , who has lived in the park for eight years. She says this latest problem is “par for the course.”
“It’s just absolutely unbelievable, and any communication has been one sided,” said Phillips.
“Imagine it’s Christmas morning, you cannot make a cup of coffee, you can’t run clothes through the washer, you know, you can’t wash your hands after opening all your gifts and handling all this stuff before you make dinner.”
Late Wednesday afternoon, the park’s owner, Toronto-based Canadian Apartment Properties REIT, said water service “is now being reintroduced” to the community and that they are optimistic that full services will “soon be returned,” but did not specify a time.
The statement went on to say that CAPREIT will implement “additional system improvements” to make sure the issue does not happen again, but did not specify what improvements it would make.
Residents of Tamarack Estates in Lincoln, N.B. are on Day 6 without running water.
The statement did not address a question from CBC News about whether residents will get a discount on this month’s lot fees because of the outage.
The outage at the park began on Dec. 22. Later that day, a boil water notice was posted that had people optimistic the water would be back soon, said Phillips.
But it was clear this wouldn’t be the case two days later, when crews set up taps attached to pump houses, she said.
In a notice sent to residents, management warned individuals to boil the water because “your jugs or other transportation means may not be sterile and we want to prevent any sickness over the holidays.”
The message did not say if the water was safe for drinking, but residents told CBC News that the water coming from the taps was “grey water,” which is generated wastewater that doesn’t include fecal contamination.
Four days later, on Wednesday, another note was issued to residents advising them that a company would be on site providing water they could drink safely.
In an emailed statement to CBC News, Canadian Apartment Properties said it was “working diligently with our consultants to understand the source of the issue and make all necessary repairs.”
The statement said management “will compensate residents who incur costs associated with securing additional sources of water.”
The statement did not say the cause of the issue.
Tamarack Estates falls in the boundaries of the Town of Oromocto, but the water supply for the park comes from wells.
A message posted to the resident portal on Dec. 22 said the issue was identified as a water main break, and messages in the following days said contractors had been unable to find the source of the leak.
In a Dec. 27 notice, management said QM Construction had been brought in to continue investigating the source of the leak. A notice from the day before said the next step would be to dig up the main line between wells five and six, which would include the installation of a valve to isolate the flow.
“By taking these measures, we aim to pinpoint the exact location of the break more accurately,” the notice read.
According to the company’s website, Tamarack Estates has 419 lots. Canadian Apartment Properties also owns several other “land lease communities” in New Brunswick.
CBC News asked the province for comment. The Department of Environment said it was the Department of Health’s jurisdiction and a Health Department spokesperson said he was looking into the request but could not provide a response Wednesday.
Mary Wilson, the MLA for the area where Tamarack is located, said in an email that she had been advocating on behalf of residents to representatives with Canadian Apartment Properties.
Konner Curtis only moved into the park last March. He said he was in the shower on Friday when the water stopped.
He went down to the company office on the property and said he was told of the water main break. He said the park administration was hopeful the issue would be resolved that day.
But that didn’t happen.
“Tensions are getting high, because you know, it’s almost been a week and some people don’t have family nearby that they can go to and rely on for this kind of stuff,” Curtis said. “So they’re just like stranded without running water.
“And there’s a lot of elderly in this park that need assistance with carrying heavy jugs of water and all that kind of stuff, so, you know, it’s been hard on the community.”
Melanie Hanam is one of the residents who couldn’t lug heavy jugs of water back to her home.
She has multiple sclerosis and Lyme disease.
Along with not being able to carry the jugs without help, Hanam said the water loss creates other problems with her illnesses.
“It’s so limiting,” she said. “If we can just achieve a shower in the run of a normal day when we have water, that’s doing well, right, like basic, basic things.
“And so without the water, which can also be helpful for therapeutic reasons, it just makes that even more of a struggle, even more exhausting.”
But Hanam said the residents of the park have had a way to talk about their issues — through a Facebook group that her 10-year-old daughter started to help keep residents connected.
She said the group took off during the park’s last extended water outage of about four days in February. At the time, the company said the outage was caused by a cold snap.
‘We’re talking about running water,'” she said.
Phillips said six days without water is “egregious” and she wants a more permanent fix after struggling with water problems at the park for so long, especially since water is supposed to be included in her $350 monthly lot fees.
She said the last few days have been difficult and she and others are concerned about sanitation. The outage has prevented showers, toilet flushing, hand washing and cleaning dishes.
“We couldn’t even shower before going to family events. … It’s just, it’s unbelievable. We pay way too much money to be having a conversation about running water.
“We’re not talking about Internet. We’re talking about running water,” said Phillips.
“They need to do whatever it is that they need to do to fix all of the pipes in this park and give the residents the security of running water. That’s it. And I don’t think that’s a big ask. I think that is very basic property ownership.”
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