Prince George, B.C.  – The  leak of water  in the vicinity of Wilson Park  on Monday  evening ( see previous story)   not only  caused  some  flooding in the park, it  released chlorinated drinking water that made its way into the Nechako River.

The leak  occurred  in a section of the newly completed redundancy line  that was installed this year, at a cost of $2.9 million dollars.

“There was some chlorinated drinking water that  overflowed towards the  river” says project manager Haley Sedola.  She says a professional biologist was  ” on site  and all of the appropriate environmental  reporting was done.”  According to  Sedola, the biologist did not think the  chlorinated water spill into the Nechako would  cause any harm to fish  habitat  “The water flowed over land, over some gravel.  Chlorine dissipates as it  is exposed to the ground and to the  air. So by the time it actually reached the river  it had passed over gravel, and rock so it wasn’t directly entering the river before it had time to dissipate.”

Sedola  says  the amount of chlorinated drinking water  that  made its way into the river was “a couple of hundred cubic meters.”.    The incident was reported to Emergency Management B.C.  says Sedola “If they want to take any further action they would be contacting us.”

Sedola says  crews are  on site  working on  repairing the damage “We are just  taking out the parts now to see what actually, specifically was  wrong with them.  We won’t know  until we actually  can inspect those closely, on what precisely happened.”

The  replacement  parts arrived in Prince George early this morning.  It is expected  the work will  be completed by the end  of today.

Residents in the bowl area of the City may  be experiencing cloudy  or low  water pressure until the work is completed.