Allison Edmunds is stressed after four days without water in her home at the Tamarack Estates mobile-home park in Lincoln, N.B.
Edmunds, who is pregnant, can’t shower or cook in her own home — and when morning sickness strikes, she has to go outside in the cold, because she can’t use her toilet.
“We can’t do laundry, we can’t cook, we can’t clean,” she said. “We can’t even flush our toilets right now. We’ve had to spend money on food because we cannot cook.”
The water outage started Saturday morning when the province was experiencing extreme cold temperatures. Edmunds said when she called the company’s emergency line about the water loss, she was told it wasn’t an emergency.
“It’s very frustrating when everybody loses water at once,” said Edmunds. “Nothing was taken care of on Saturday.”
Residents of Tamarack Estates, owned by Canadian Apartment Properties REIT (CAPREIT), say this isn’t the first time they’ve had water issues.
Black water ongoing issue, says resident
Lacey Phillips, another Tamarack resident, said she got her water back Monday after losing it more than 48 hours earlier.
She said the residents all pay lot fees which include water. Hers is around $350 each month.
Phillips said it’s not unusual to have a boil notice in effect for Tamarack, but she said it’s also not unusual to have black water coming out of her taps — boil order or no boil order.
“It happens to me all the time,” said Phillips. “I go and run a bath and then I come back and check the bath and it’s like dark-grey black.”
Phillips said CAPREIT first sent a notice about the water outage Sunday night. The same night, it informed residents that if they saved their receipts for bought water, they could be reimbursed.
CAPREIT did not respond to an interview request, but CAPREIT spokesperson Danny Roth provided an emailed statement confirming that the cold snap caused the water service disruptions.
He said water service has been restored and if people were still without water, “it is a result of a frozen or burst pipe under their home.”
As of Tuesday, several residents, including Edmunds, were still without water.
Roth said in his statement that New Brunswick Public Health guidelines require a boil water advisory because the water loss lasted longer than 15 minutes.
He said water will be re-tested and the advisory will be lifted when allowed.
CAPREIT did not respond to follow-up questions from CBC News about reports of dirty water, reimbursement for other services like plumbers or meal costs or if the issue has also affected the other 17 or more New Brunswick mobile-home parks owned by CAPREIT.
According to its website, the Toronto-based company owns or has interests in around 65,000 residential apartment suites, townhomes and “land lease community sites” in Canada and the Netherlands.
A notice posted on CAPREIT’s resident portal Tuesday night suggested that residents who still don’t have water should check that their heat tape is functioning properly.
The notice said plumbers will come Wednesday to “assist with the investigation of the remaining homes who still have frozen lines and defrost them.”
If the heat tape is intact and the lines are frozen in the ground, CAPREIT will cover the cost of repairs.
The notice also addressed the “murky” water, which it states is caused by naturally-occurring manganese that is common in the area. It said regular tests are completed and when not under a boil water advisory, the water is safe. The notice said running the outside taps of the home for 20 minutes should resolve the issue.
MLA involved
During the water outage, some residents turned to the MLA for Oromocto-Lincoln-Fredericton, Mary Wilson.
Since Sunday evening, Wilson said she’s communicated with around 30 people from Tamarack, which she said has 450 homes.
Wilson said she contacted the CAPREIT director of operations to pass on the contact information for the residents who still didn’t have water. She said she also confirmed with the director that above-ground issues are the responsibility of the homeowner while below-ground problems are covered by CAPREIT.
This story was originally published in CBC News on Feb. 8, 2023.
Hannah Rudderham Portfolio 