We've been living in Coral Harbour for 2 months now and I found out a couple weeks ago that many "southerners" here boil their water. Apparently their was a parasite "contamination" about a year ago. Nobody seemed to know the details of the story except for the fact that some people were sick. Someone actually said that the water isn't treated here... Is that possible? I have no idea! It seems strange because the water is clear and tastes so good (the water in Selkirk was terrible!!!!) but I guess anything is possible here.
I'm not sure if I've explained this before, but we have a Water Truck and a Sewage Truck that come by everyday to do the obvious: fill up the water tanks and empty the sewage tank. The reason being there is no underground plumbing here since we live in the permafrost. Anyway I guess the water tank is supposed to be washed once a year but parasites might still live in the tanks despite the cold. Apparently one could see little red worms coming through the tap during the "contamination". When I heard this my stomach felt sick. Some of you know how much I have a aversion to worms (especially small ones or maggots - I always garden with gloves on!). So here we've been drinking water from the tap for nearly 2 months... Why didn't anybody tell us this? Seriously I need to write a "Things to Know When You're New to Coral Harbour" book. Now, as you can imagine, I boil water. All our drinking water is boiled. It's yet another pain in the neck thing to do but I'm not willing to take that chance with our young boys. Apparently, one of the male teachers was once deathly sick from parasite contaminated water in another Northern community. Yikes.
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