Cape Coral has rescinded all four of its remaining precautionary boil water notices inside thirteen minutes this morning, taking the city's active layer to zero for the first time in at least ten days

The City of Cape Coral has rescinded the last four precautionary boil water notices it had open, and its active boil water layer now returns no areas at all.

The four came off in a single stretch this morning. The city's own utilities record stamps the first rescission at 8.56 and the last at 9.09, twelve minutes and seventeen seconds apart, all four made by the same member of staff.

Until this morning each of the four sat on the city's active layer with no rescission date against it. Each now sits on the rescind layer carrying one.

The four areas

The largest was around 1822 Santa Barbara Place, about 13.5 acres, which had been the biggest in the city for over a week. It was rescinded at 9.09.

Around 2728 SE 8th Avenue, about 4.9 acres, was rescinded at 9.06. Both of those areas went under after water main breaks on 17 August.

The two more recent ones went under on 24 August. Around 1514 SW 16th Court, about 7.9 acres, was rescinded at 9.02. Around 1017 SE 39th Terrace, about 3.6 acres, was rescinded at 8.57.

Together they covered about 30 acres, which is the same acreage this desk recorded across the same four areas yesterday. None of them grew or shrank in between.

How long each had been running

The 8th Avenue area was the longest, at ten days and twenty minutes from its own break stamp to its own rescission stamp. Counting 17 August as the first day makes Thursday the eleventh.

The Santa Barbara Place area was close behind at nine days and twenty hours, also an eleventh calendar day. The 16th Court area ran three days and one hour, and the 39th Terrace area two days and twenty-two hours, each a fourth calendar day.

Because the 8th Avenue notice ran without a break across that whole period, at least one part of Cape Coral was under a boil water notice at every moment from the morning of 17 August until 9.06 on Thursday.

An empty layer is a snapshot, not a condition

This is worth reading carefully before anyone treats the city as permanently clear.

The city says on its own Boil Water page that precautionary notices are issued almost every week, and that most of these breaks affect only small, isolated areas. On that description an empty map is an ordinary gap between notices rather than a milestone.

The city draws each area as a shape on a map rather than describing it by street name, so the map remains the only thing that answers whether a particular address falls inside an area. Today it answers that none does.

Why all four cleared together is not explained

The city has published no narrative notice about this morning's clearances.

Its published rule is that 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.

That rule does not on its own account for what happened this morning. Two of these areas were stamped on 17 August and two on 24 August, a week apart, yet all four cleared inside thirteen minutes. The sequence and the stamps are what the record shows, and this desk is not asserting a reason the city has not given.

What the notices required while they were in force

For anyone who was inside one of the four, the city's guidance was to bring water to a rolling boil for one minute before drinking it, cooking with it, making ice, rinsing food, preparing baby bottles or brushing teeth, or to use bottled water instead.

The same page is explicit that showering and doing laundry are never restricted by a boil water notice, and that a precautionary notice does not always mean the drinking water is contaminated.

None of that applies anywhere in the city as of this morning.