Cape Coral has rescinded the precautionary boil water notice around 1019 SE 43rd Street, the city's longest running area, after seven days and twenty-two hours, and four areas covering about thirty acres stay active

The City of Cape Coral has rescinded the precautionary boil water notice covering about 7.5 acres around 1019 SE 43rd Street.

The city's own utilities record carries a rescission stamp of 9.34 this morning against that area. Until this morning the same record sat on the city's active layer with no rescission date at all, which is where this desk found it yesterday.

It was the longest running notice the city had. The area went under it after a water main break stamped at 11.59 on the morning of 18 August. From that stamp to this morning's rescission is seven days, twenty-one hours and thirty-four minutes. Counting 18 August as the first day makes Wednesday the ninth.

Four areas are still active

The lift takes the city from five active areas to four.

Those four are at 2728 SE 8th Avenue, at 1822 Santa Barbara Place, at 1514 SW 16th Court and at 1017 SE 39th Terrace. Together they cover about 30 acres, against about 37 across five yesterday. The whole of that fall is the 43rd Street area coming off the list, so none of the others has grown or shrunk.

The Santa Barbara Place area, at about 13.5 acres, remains the largest in the city.

One area still active sits three tenths of a mile away

This is the part to check before anyone stops boiling.

The lifted area around 43rd Street and the still active area around 1017 SE 39th Terrace have centres about three tenths of a mile apart. They are the two closest areas on the city's map, and one of them is off while the other is not.

The city draws these areas as polygons rather than describing them by street name, so the map is the only reliable way to tell whether a particular address falls inside one. Two homes a few streets apart can sit on opposite sides of that boundary, and being near an area that has been lifted is not the same as being in it.

What the city says about clearing a notice

The city's Boil Water page sets out the rule it works to. It cannot issue a rescission until it has two consecutive days of clear laboratory results from the Lee County Health Department, and it notes that the lab is closed on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

The 43rd Street break is stamped on a Tuesday. A Saturday and a Sunday fell inside the period that followed. The rescission is stamped on a Wednesday.

The city has published no narrative notice explaining this particular clearance, so those are the dates and the published rule, and this desk is not asserting that the weekend is why this area took nine days.

For anyone still inside one of the four

The city's standing guidance is unchanged. It recommends bringing water to a rolling boil for one minute before use or consumption, or using bottled water instead, and it applies that to drinking, cooking, making ice, rinsing food, preparing baby bottles and brushing teeth.

The same page is explicit that showering and doing laundry are not restricted by a boil water notice.