The largest shape on Cape Coral's water map, a 47 acre area at 1957 Diplomat Parkway East that the city had listed since August 6 as a planned shutdown for 9 a.m. on August 12, moved on to the active boil water layer on Monday afternoon, two days ahead of its published date and with no explanation posted, taking the city to six live areas and about 202 acres
The largest area on Cape Coral's boil water map is no longer a date in the diary.
The city's public map service carried 1957 Diplomat Parkway East on its Scheduled Shutdown Area layer from August 6, with a published interruption of 9 a.m. on August 12. When this site read the same service at 11.21 a.m. on Monday, it was still there, one of four scheduled items, and the active layer held five areas.
By 3.14 p.m. the record had moved. The active layer holds six areas and the scheduled layer holds three. The city has published no notice explaining why the date changed.
The area covers 47.23 acres, the largest of the six. Its shape is a 21 sided ring rather than a block, filling about 58 per cent of a bounding box roughly 3,700 feet east to west by 970 feet north to south. Points around its edge place it along Diplomat Parkway East at the western end and out to about Northeast 21st Avenue at the eastern end, between Northeast 16th Place at the south and Northeast 17th Terrace at the north, with Northeast 18th Place through the middle, in postcode 33909.
Two details in the record are worth stating plainly rather than tidying away.
Its interruption stamp still reads August 12 at 08.32, two days after the day it went active, while its own hour fields on the same record read 9 a.m. This site has already found that pair of fields contradicting itself on two other Cape Coral records, so nothing here is calculated from them.
Its cause field reads Water Main Break. So does every other record on this service, including the three that are still only scheduled, so it is not evidence that a pipe has failed at this address, and no such claim is made here.
Cape Coral now has about 202 acres under precautionary notice at once. None of the other five areas has been rescinded. The 45.51 acre shape at 2213 SE 10th Avenue has been in force about seven hours and the 33.92 acre shape at 428 Hancock Bridge Parkway about five. The two shapes at 909 Cape Coral Parkway West have run about 32 and 28 hours. The 22.93 acre shape at 3622 SE 5th Court, logged on Friday morning, has passed 76 hours.
Cape Coral runs its own water system, separate from Lee County Utilities, which publishes a different map.
The instruction inside any of the areas is the city's standard one. Residents are advised to bring water to a rolling boil for one minute before drinking it, cooking with it, washing their hands, making ice, brushing their teeth, washing dishes, rinsing raw foods or preparing any other drink, including baby bottles, or to use bottled water instead. Showering and doing laundry are not restricted.
The city is equally direct that a notice is not a finding about the water. Its published guidance states that the State Department of Health requires a precautionary notice when a line break leaves the system at zero or negative pressure, and that one may also be issued when a main break causes pressure to drop below 20 psi or when routine samples show low disinfection residual. Asked on its own page whether this means the water is unsafe, the city answers no, and says the guidelines require the notice and that this does not always mean the drinking water is contaminated.
The city also publishes why a notice can run for days. It states that it must receive two consecutive days of clear laboratory results before it can issue a rescission, that the Lee County Health Department does the testing, and that a break occurring from Thursday evening through Sunday evening can take longer because the laboratory is closed at weekends and on holidays. No expected lift date has been published for any of the six.
Three shutdowns are still listed as scheduled and not started: 4620 SE 5th Place on August 11, 1019 SE 43rd Street on August 12 and 1108 SE 39th Terrace on August 18.
Anyone checking their own status should note that these notices are applied by mapped shape rather than by street name, so an address just outside a boundary is not covered and one inside it is, whatever street the work happens on. The city has notified affected residents electronically since 2015, by text message or telephone call rather than by hand delivered notice, and residents can update the contact details it holds for them.
