Hundreds of Mission residents forced to drink bottled water

Old landfill material found leaching into reservoir

The Vancouver Sun

MISSION, B.C. - Several hundred residents of this Fraser Valley city are getting bottled water after potentially toxic material was discovered running from an old landfill into a water reservoir.

The material leaching from the landfill into Hayward Lake, which supplies drinking water to about 300 homes, was discovered by on Jan. 28 by B.C. Hydro, which owns the lake.

The power company told the District of Mission, about 80 kilometres east of Vancouver, on Feb. 1 but residents apparently were not informed until Tuesday.

District officials say the material is a toxic mixture of various chemicals.

"I really can't give you the exact sort of quantity of leachate that made its way to the lake,'' said district spokesman Dennis Clark. "It is considerable and we're taking it very seriously but I can't give you a volume measurement of it.''

Clark said all the affected residents would receive bottled drinking water while tests were done to learn the level of contamination.

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