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In the meantime, it will set up four sites to distribute bottled water to affected residents. The locations of these sites have not been announced yet.

Public health officials are telling residents to use bottle water to prepare food, beverages, and ice. Anything prepared with tap water since yesterday should be discarded.

Since there are only trace amounts of diesel in the water, officials do have serious concerns for people’s health. Possible symptoms of diesel poisoning include nausea, stomach ache and diarrhea, said Marc-André Lemieux, director of public health for the Montérégie region. But so far, none of these have been widely reported.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said the city is working with Longueuil and government ministries on the diesel spill.

The cause of the leak

The spill was traced to a generator that powered pumps at a pumping station at 850 St-Charles St. W. Most of it spilled onto the river, but some made it into a sewage drain. It made its way along a long pipe to the Centre d’épuration Rive-Sud, a treatment station on Île Charron by Boucherville.

From there, it was pumped into the drinking water system.

Delays in communication

Christian Blanchette, the regional coordinator for Urgence-Environnement, said the large fuel spill could not be properly contained or cleaned up because authorities were not made aware of the issue fast enough.

“There was a delay between the 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. period and yesterday. I asked [the city’s] management to do an investigation into that time frame and that’s what’s happening now. This is the result of broken equipment. There was no negligence whatsoever,” said St-Hilaire.