Town and Country Utilities puts all of Babcock Ranch under a precautionary boil water notice after a treatment plant power loss

Town and Country Utilities issued a precautionary boil water notice for the entire Babcock Ranch community on July 24, telling residents to boil tap water before drinking it. WGCU reported the notice, and Derrick Shaw covered it for WINK News.

The trigger was a brief loss of power at the water treatment plant during Phase III construction activity, according to the utility. A power interruption at a treatment plant can drop system pressure, and a pressure drop is the condition under which the state requires a precautionary notice, because low pressure is the point at which outside contamination could enter the lines. The notice is precautionary. No contamination has been confirmed.

Under the notice, tap water must be brought to a rolling boil for one minute before it is used to drink, cook, make ice, brush teeth, or wash food, and residents who prefer not to boil are told to use bottled water. The utility says tap water remains safe for showering and for washing hands with soap. The guidance applies to every address in the community, not a single street or phase.

Town and Country Utilities says the notice will stand for a minimum of 48 hours and will be rescinded only after two consecutive rounds of bacteriological samples meet state and federal requirements. That timeline puts the likely all-clear into the weekend rather than the same day. The utility posts updates to the community's official channel on the Babcock Ranch Living website, which is where residents are being directed for the rescission notice; no standalone notice document was reachable at a stable public URL at the time of publication, so this brief credits WGCU and WINK News for the report and links the utility's official page.

Babcock Ranch sits at the northern edge of the Southwest Florida market, straddling the Charlotte and Lee county line north of Fort Myers.