‘A cautionary tale’: Water services restored to Town of Outlook, Sask.

(Hallee Mandryk/CTV News)

After more than a week without water, residents in the town of Outlook and surrounding communities can now breathe a sigh of relief when turning on their taps.

“It was an interesting piece, an interesting time. People are very excited to think that their life is back to normal,” Kevin Trew, chief administrative officer for the Town of Outlook said.

The issue began on the morning of Dec.15, when the hatch to the town’s water supply was found wide open, with the lock broken. This quickly lead to the decision that the town’s water system had been compromised, and a local state of emergency was declared.

Around 2,500 residents were instructed not to use the town’s water for any purposes while the town and the Water Security Agency flushed the system and tested the water.

“It was a full week plus another day [until] we were back to normal, which I think is a testament to our community resilience and our team, and the Town of Outlook, who made things happen as quickly as we could,” Trew said.

After a series of advisories were issues, each downgrading the severity of the situation, the water advisory was lifted on Dec. 23. This decision was made after two separate bacteriological tests were performed by the WSA on samples from the town’s water supply.

“I think there’s a real cautionary tale here. And I’m super proud that we actually, I think we saw an unprecedented event, and then we have an unprecedented response. we’re really proud of how we responded,” Trew said.

Trew said he had a number of concerns regarding the public response to the lack of water, but he was pleasantly surprised to see the town rally together.

“I think it’s unbelievable that we were just able to get to such a level where there was just an understanding that we were all together, that we’re doing this together,” Trew said.

Trew added that the town had to put out an advisory informing residents that they were over capacity for volunteers to assist in delivering updates door to door.

“When the snowstorm was happening, there was a lot of different volunteers even going around and shoveling people’s sidewalks and shoveling people’s driveways and shoveling up to their doors,” Trew said.

RCMP continue to investigate the incident; however, there have been no recent updates regarding potential suspects. Police previously said the suspect or suspects were believed to be at the scene in the early hours of Dec. 15, and anyone with information is asked to contact police or Crime Stoppers.

“We’re in that stage where we were cleaning up the disaster itself, but then now we’re cleaning up from all the collateral damage,” Trew said.

The CAO told CTV that the financial losses to the Town of Outlook are likely to total around $100,000. This cost is separate from the individual losses experienced by businesses that had to halt operations due to the lack of water.

• Get the latest news from Saskatoon, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

Moving forward, the town has designated a staff member to assist residents and businesses in the recovery process.

“We’ve defined a team member to be the go-to on this and get herself so that she’s very aware of the process and what the implications are for different businesses and just to help give advice,” Trew said.

Town council has also made the decision to credit residents with a month of water and sewer services as compensation for the service disruption.

The timing of this local emergency coincided with Outlook’s deputy mayor, Kevin Grotheim, stepping down due to personal reasons. Trew shared that this decision was made by Grotheim prior to that morning when the town’s water was found to be compromised.

“The mayor and I were back going to be doing a news release regarding that, and then and then this happened at 9:30 on Monday morning. So we just delayed the announcement,” Trew said.

Trew added that the decision to delay the announcement was made in order to separate the two events from one another.

In a release sent out by the Town of Outlook, Mayor Ryan Husband thanked Grotheim for his seven and half years of service and referred to him as “An advocate for all ratepayers in the Town of Outlook,” going on to say “he has always wanted and strived for the best for our citizens,”

“We definitely wanted to try to make that easy on him as well and not sensationalize it in any way, shape or form,” Trew said.

A byelection will be scheduled to take place prior to June 14, 2026, in order to fill Grotheim’s seat.

While the week without water was not easy, Trew shared that those in his community rose to the occasion ahead of the holiday season.

I don’t know if it’s because of the urgency or emergency piece, or if it’s just Christmas. I don’t know what it was, but there was just that sense of giving. Maybe it’s the season, I don’t know, but whatever it is, it was it was it was phenomenal," Trew said.

Moving into the new year, the town plans to upgrade the security surrounding the water treatment facility. Trew added that this situation will now serve as a cautionary tale for other communities.

“We all think that it’s important for us to be having conversations on a provincial level regarding what happened in Outlook, how it can happen in other communities fairly easily. We want to not only learn for ourselves, we want to help other communities learn as well. And that’s, that’s a piece of the bigger pie,” Trew said.