Three Cape Coral areas are still under precautionary boil water notices, and the city's own map has not rescinded any of them
Cape Coral's official map of areas under a precautionary boil water notice showed three of them still active early Tuesday, with no rescind date recorded against any of the three.
The city's own records attribute all three to water main breaks. One covers 811 SE 34th Street and was logged on July 27 at 10:54 a.m. A second covers 6061 Silver King Boulevard and was logged the same day at 1:08 p.m. The third, at 2118 Skyline Boulevard, is the oldest of the set: it carries a break date of July 20 and an interruption date of July 27, and it has not been rescinded.
A fourth entry sits on a separate layer of the same map and is not a break. It is a scheduled shutdown affecting 1627 NE 23rd Terrace, entered on July 24, with an interruption date of July 29 at 9 a.m.
Residents who want to know whether their address is inside one of these areas have to look at the map, which the city links from its Boil Water page. The notices are drawn as areas rather than published as street lists, so an address a block outside the boundary is not covered by the notice and an address inside it is, regardless of which street the break itself was on.
On what the notice actually requires, the city is specific. Bring water to a rolling boil for one minute before using it for drinking, cooking, washing hands, making ice, cooking surfaces, rinsing or preparing raw foods, preparing baby bottles and other drinks, brushing teeth, or washing dishes, or use bottled water instead. The city states that the precaution mainly applies to ingesting the water, and that showering and doing laundry are not restricted.
The city also states that a precautionary notice does not by itself mean the drinking water is contaminated. Florida's Department of Health guidelines require the notice when a line break leaves the system at zero or negative pressure, when a main break causes pressure to drop below 20 psi, or when routine samples show low disinfection residual, as well as in the different case where confirmatory samples indicate pathogens. Cape Coral describes main breaks as a common occurrence in any public water system.
The scale of that commonness is visible on the map itself. The layer holding lifted notices lists ten of them rescinded between July 22 and July 25, each one attributed to a water main break, at addresses including SW 24th Street, SE 1st Place, Andalusia Boulevard, SE 26th Street, SE 25th Lane, SW 1st Street, Ottersrest Lane, SE 38th Terrace and Country Club Boulevard. Counting those alongside the three still open, every boil water record now on the city's map carries a break date in July.
