Spring runoff causing funky water with strong chlorine smell in Edmonton – Edmonton

That, combined with a stronger smell and taste of chlorine, has some residents thinking twice if they should use it.

“The water is safe to drink,” said Jonathan Gelinas, EPCOR’s senior manager of operations at the Rossdale water plant.

“We use chlorine all year round as our primary disinfectant. In this time of year, though, we do get sometimes some higher smell of chlorine because of the organics in the water.”

That’s due to spring runoff season getting underway.

As the longer, warmer days melt snow that flows into the North Saskatchewan River, it brings with it large amounts of sediments, decomposing vegetation and other organic materials that are washed off the land upstream of the city’s two water treatment plants: Rossdale near downtown and E.L. Smith in the city’s southwest.

This leads to a change in the quality of the water in the river, giving it a musty or earthy smell. Some people last week also complained of a rotten citrus-type smell to the water.

“We really saw an increase in organics (last) Thursday,” Gelinas said, adding that a lot of organic material showed up in the river water over the weekend. As a result, EPCOR had to boost the amount of chemicals needed to make the water safe for use.

Get daily National news

Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you’ll never miss the day’s top stories.

What ends up in our tap water is chloramine, a disinfectant created by combining chlorine with a small amount of ammonia.

EPCOR said it adds both chemicals at its water treatment plants to form chloramines, which stay in the water longer than free chlorine.

“That’s why people are noticing it. Usually, in about three to five days, we should really see this smell start to diminish and Edmontonians should hopefully get their water back the way they’re used to having it.”

EPCOR said when spring runoff starts to show up, it also adjusts its process by adding powdered activated carbon in the first stage of water treatment. EPCOR said the activated carbon helps remove odour-causing compounds and is then removed by sedimentation.

In the meantime, there are several things that people who can’t stand the taste or smell right now can do.

EPCOR said people can run their cold water taps for about three minutes or so to flush the lines in the morning or when they haven’t been used in six or more hours.

Residents can also use carbon filter products like a Brita pitcher or make sure the filters in their fridge water dispensers are still in good shape.

“Or, if you like lemon in your water, you could add a slice of lemon. It kind of helps with the taste or the smell that you may be experiencing currently,” Gelinas said.

One thing that likely won’t work? Leaving water to air out. While water containing free chlorine will off-gas in about a day, chloramine is more stable and can take weeks to dissipate naturally, requiring chemical neutralizers or special filters (like activated carbon) to remove.

EPCOR has teams that test the city’s tap water multiple times a day, including a team that analyzes the odour.

“We do smelling panels at the plant. We also have a home sniffing program where we have over 300 volunteers throughout the city that sniff their water every day that provides us feedback,” Gelinas said.

“Obviously, right now, they’re providing us some feedback that they’re smelling chlorine higher than usual. So we’re changing our process to make sure that this is addressed.”

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.