Fort Myers boil water notice: 2 Villas areas open since Friday

Two precautionary boil water notices covering a stretch of Dorchester Street and Chandler Avenue in the Villas area of Fort Myers have been open on Lee County's water map since Friday morning, and the county did not lift either one when it cleared three others on Saturday

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 23, 2026

Seen from above, a person in a mustard yellow sweater stands at a white marble kitchen counter beside a small stainless steel sink, pouring clear water from a glass carafe held in one hand into a short drinking glass held in the other. A brushed steel mixer tap sits at the edge of the sink. No face is visible and no text, signage or branding appears anywhere in the frame. Stock photograph, not a photograph of this event.

Stock photo

Stock photo. Not the actual scene. Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels

What it changes

If your address is on the covered stretch of Dorchester Street or Chandler Avenue in the Villas, Lee County has not lifted your boil water notice, and the practical reading this morning is that you should still be boiling. The county names the affected addresses literally rather than by neighbourhood, and they are worth checking that way rather than by feel: 8921 through 8949 Dorchester Street on one notice, and 2418 through 2457 Chandler Avenue on the other. If your number is outside those ranges, neither notice covers you. What you do under a notice is what the county sets out on its own page. Bring tap water to a rolling boil for at least one minute before drinking it, cooking with it, making ice, brushing teeth or washing dishes, or use bottled water instead. The notice stays in effect until bacteriological testing confirms the water is safe, which the county says usually takes 48 to 72 hours. Both of these are stamped 9.30 on Friday morning, which is about 45 hours ago, so they are inside that window rather than past it. Nothing here says the water is unsafe. A precautionary notice is issued when pressure in a main drops below 20 psi, which the county says typically happens after a break or during scheduled maintenance, and it goes out to protect people whether or not contamination has been found. The county wrote the cause of both of these in its own words: a two inch main break on Dorchester Street and a four inch main break on Chandler Avenue, both logged on Friday morning. There is one reason to take the open status at face value rather than as a weekend paperwork lag. The county worked this layer on Saturday morning and lifted three other notices inside twenty seconds of each other, at about 10.47 a.m., and did not lift these two. That says the records were in front of whoever cleared the others. It does not say anything about the test results, which nobody has published. To check either one yourself, the county runs an automated hotline on 239-533-8575, updated daily by 4 p.m., where option one gives current notices and option two tells you whether a notice has been rescinded. The number attached to both of these records is (239) 533-8845, which is also the line for reporting an after-hours problem. Two cautions about coverage, both of which cut against this item rather than for it. Lee County Utilities and the City of Cape Coral are separate systems on separate maps, and a Cape Coral address is not covered by anything here. The Cape Coral map this site has used since early August has been removed from the city's server altogether, and its notices page returns an error, so no figure is given for Cape Coral this morning in either direction. Collier County and the City of Fort Myers each publish their own layer, and both showed no active advisory when they were checked this morning.

Lee County Utilities is carrying two open boil water notices on its water map on Sunday morning, August 23, and both of them have been open since Friday.

The county's map service was queried directly at about 6.15 a.m. It returns six records in total. Four carry a lift date. Two do not.

Both of the open ones are in the Villas area, an unincorporated place with a Fort Myers mailing address, and both are stamped 9.30 a.m. on Friday.

The first is at 8954 Dorchester Street. The county describes the job in its own words as a two inch main break, and gives the affected addresses as 8921 through 8949 Dorchester Street. The record went up at 11.10 that morning and has not been edited since.

The second is at 2457 Chandler Avenue. The county describes it as a four inch main break, and gives the affected addresses as 2418 through 2457 Chandler Avenue. That record went up at 11.46 the same morning and has not been edited since either.

Both polygons were geocoded twice, against the Census Bureau's current benchmark and against OpenStreetMap. Both fall inside Villas CDP in Lee County, in the 33907 ZIP code.

The county did edit this layer over the weekend. Its own editing record puts the last change at 10.47.26 on Saturday morning, and three notices were lifted within twenty seconds of each other at that time. Neither of these two was among them.

Both records carry the type code ESD. The county does not publish what its type codes mean, either on the map or on its notices page, so no meaning is claimed for that code here and the county's own plain description of each job is quoted instead.

Lee County issues a precautionary notice when pressure in a main line drops below 20 psi, and lifts it after bacteriological testing confirms the water is safe. The county says that testing usually takes 48 to 72 hours. Friday at 9.30 a.m. is about 45 hours before this was written.

Lee County's published Precautionary Boil Water Notices page carries no list of individual notices. It directs residents to an automated hotline on 239-533-8575, updated daily by 4 p.m., and to the interactive map. The contact number attached to both open records is (239) 533-8845.

Collier County and the City of Fort Myers each publish a separate layer for their own systems, and both showed no active advisory when they were checked on Sunday morning.

The City of Cape Coral runs a separate water system again, and a Cape Coral address is not covered by either of these notices. The map service this site has read since early August has been removed from the city's server, and the city's boil water notices page returns an error, so no Cape Coral figure is given here in either direction.

Two precautionary boil water notices covering a stretch of Dorchester Street and Chandler Avenue in the Villas area of Fort Myers have been open on Lee County's water map since Friday morning, and the county did not lift either one when it cleared three others on Saturday

Lee County lifted the boil water notice on Dorchester Street in the Villas at 9.23 on Sunday morning, forty eight hours after the main broke, and left the Chandler Avenue notice a few streets away open

A crash with injuries closed part of Interstate 75 southbound at mile marker 85 on Alligator Alley in Collier County shortly after midday on Sunday, and the state dispatch board no longer carried it forty minutes later

A crash blocked the right lane of Interstate 75 southbound at mile marker 141 in Lee County late on Sunday morning, and the state dispatch board had dropped it by lunchtime

Cape Coral has given itself the power to fine unlicensed contractors up to 2,500 dollars a violation, and it is paying for the investigator who will find them with a five dollar charge on every building permit