Newfoundland students get bottled water after well near cemetery raises concerns.
Students in Newfoundland are drinking bottled water amid concerns about how close their high school’s well is to an adjacent graveyard.
“There’s signs all over the school saying: Do Not Drink the Water,” said one student who took photos of brown water Wednesday as it ran from a washroom tap.
READ: Shediac Bay residents rally for clean water One parent estimates the well is within about 10 metres of the closest graves, which are on the other side of a retaining wall, but a school board spokesman said it is about 40 metres from the closest grave.
Kirby said it has nothing to do with water safety.
Susan Stamp, one of almost 800 members of a local concerned parents’ group fighting the project, said the water wasn’t discoloured last year.
“It’s a little disturbing that we know that for years students have been drinking this water and now the government is forcing the issue and saying we’re going to be drinking it for the foreseeable future without doing anything major to move the well.” Caskets were exposed during an extension of the old high school decades ago, Stamp added.
Loyola Hutchings, chairman of the Mobile Cemetery Committee, said there are about 200 to 250 graves there.
“They don’t want any more graves disturbed.” Stamp’s group, the Concerned Parents of St. Bernard’s and Mobile Central High, has lobbied the province for years to build a new middle school in the fast-growing region.
Stamp said many parents aren’t convinced there will be adequate water and septic service.