Numerous worried residents in the Whitehorse area have recently brought forward their concerns about the quality of the city's drinking water, due to flooding in the Southern Lakes region.

Many people's yards have become flooded, including their septic fields, and as part of the response effort, water is being pumped into the Southern Lakes system, from which it could potentially contaminate the city's supply of drinking water.

Whitehorse resident Huguette Pomerelau said she hasn't brought a glass of tap water to her lips for the past two weeks.

'I don't drink the tap water here anymore because I'm afraid of it,' she said. 'If there is something in it, we could end up with a whole bunch of sick people at the hospital.'

Pomerelau said she visited a friend's residence in Tagish in the past couple weeks. It dawned on her then that the septic fields have been flooded, and that water could wind up in Whitehorse.

'The water is brown and it smells like hell,' she said. 'Then it's getting pumped into the Tagish River, which meets up with the Yukon River which flows to Whitehorse. And I've been told by lots of people not to stick my hand in the water, which can't be a good thing.'

Pomerelau thinks a boil water advisory should also be implemented here in Whitehorse. On July 18th, Bryce Larke, the territory's chief medical health officer, issued a boil water advisory for Marsh Lake due to the increasing water levels, and the concern that water sources could be contaminated by bacteria from the environment or people's outhouses and septic fields.

Such bacteria could be a danger to human health.

'Nobody here has thought about this,' Pomerelau said.

Jim McLeod, the city's manager of public works, said the drinking supply is chlorinated, and that at least 80 per cent of the city's drinking water is currently being drawn from wells.

'Very little is coming out of the river itself,' McLeod said. 'Everything is tested on an ongoing basis. There may be a little bit of an increase, but we're watching things very closely. So no, it's not a concern.'

Eric Bergsma, acting manager for Environmental Health Services, said 12 or 13 different samples from all over the city are brought in on a weekly basis for testing, and none of them have come back positive.

'I'm the manager, and nobody has run into my office saying there's bacteria in the water, so I'm pretty sure it's safe,' he said.

Environment officials recently took a number of samples from Carcross, Tagish, Marsh Lake and Lake Laberge, which were then sent to a laboratory in Vancouver to be analyzed. They are currently being tested for fecal coliforms, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and phosphorus.

'If any of the test samples from Vancouver come back positive, we'll decide what actions to take at that point. If there are any indications that any of them are contaminated, we'll make a decision then,' Bergsma said.

Bacterial results are already available and were compared against guidelines set by the Canadian Recreational Water Quality standards. Only one of those results was a concern, but it was from a non-recreational sample taken from an alleyway that runs between two properties. Water moves into that alleyway from a ditch.

Water samples can be taken to #2 Hospital Road for free testing.