Prince Rupert has Canada's 3rd busiest port and a growing economy. So why can't residents drink its water?

Darren Lagimodiere wants a reprieve for taxpayers in Prince Rupert, B.C., who are forced to pay for water they can't drink.

The longtime resident says boil water advisories in the North Coast city have become so frequent that many people have resorted to installing filtration systems or storing huge bottles of water in their homes — a costly addition to their regular household bills.

"People are fed up, and people are out of pocket," he said.

In 2024 alone, the city has had more than two months' worth of boil water notices, the latest of which was issued Monday following an equipment failure in the city's water system. As a result, roughly 14,000 people have been advised to boil all water for at least a minute prior to drinking it or using it for cooking, cleaning food, making ice or brushing teeth.

It is the fifth such notice issued this year, including one that lasted from July 19 until Aug. 1 and another that lasted from Sept. 10 to Oct. 11.

"I would say it's easily the number one topic in the community, and it's the number one frustration in the community," Lagimodiere said. "It affects everybody."

It's especially frustrating as the city has, on paper, been booming. Over the past two decades, the Port of Prince Rupert has expanded to become Canada's third-busiest, following Vancouver and Montreal, due to its close proximity to Asian markets, attracting new industrial developments and government dollars.

But none of that can change the fact the city is playing catch-up on upgrades to a water system that dates back more than a century, according to Mayor Herb Pond. He says while the city is working to address that gap, residents should expect repeated advisories about water quality in the years ahead.

In response, Lagimodiere has started a petition calling on the city to give residents a break from paying their water utility fees until the water system is fixed. But Pond says that money is necessary in order to pay for much-needed upgrades to the city's more than 100-year-old water system.

"I understand where they're coming from, but unfortunately, there's no way to do it because ... that's money that's been set aside to fix the problem," he said in an interview with CBC News.

"That's money that needs to be put into the next kilometre of pipe, or you know, toward the water filtration."

The BIG Project

According to the city, a major portion of the city's sewer and water lines was first installed in the early 1900s.

They should have been replaced decades ago, Pond says, but in the 1980s and 1990s, the city was struggling as major employers, including a pulp mill and fish plants, shut down.

The city's economic fortunes have changed in the past two decades with the growth of the Port of Prince Rupert. But as the city grew, so did the strain on aging infrastructure — an issue highlighted in 2022 when several pipes broke, leading the city to declare a local state of emergency. 

Now, after decades of stagnation, the city has been working to play catch up through the BIG project (an acronym for the Big Infrastructure Gap) that has seen the city map out 26 kilometres of pipe that need immediate attention due to their high risk of failure.

Other levels of government are on board, as well: the province has invested $65 million and the feds $77.2 million to support the replacement of aging pipe. In both cases, senior levels of government cited Prince Rupert's strategic importance in international trade as a reason for the investment.

But that still only covers a portion of the estimated $205 million in immediate investment needed, with the bulk of the remaining money coming from city funds.

That's why Pond says the city can't afford to provide residents a break on paying their bills, as much as he sympathizes with the sentiment behind it.

"There's just not another source of money for us," he said. "I get it, but ... if we discount it, then we won't be able to do the work that will get us where we need to be."

The good news, Pond says, is the city now has a roadmap to get to that final destination, projecting that in the next three years, it will have "clean and clear" and reliably-delivered water "and this generation of taxpayers and citizens get to be part of making it happen."

But he warned in the short term, residents should expect more advisories as construction work and replacement of key infrastructure stir up problems with the current water system.

But for Lagimodiere, that answer doesn't carry water: He says there are many people who are struggling with the cost of fixing a century-old problem, and the city should be able to support them.

"It would be nice for the city to, you know, look out for the little guy," he said. "They are able to award huge sums of money to contractors to help fix the problem, but they don't seem to want to help the people at the very bottom."