Waterbone epidemic of acute infectious non-bacterial gastroenteritis in Alberta, Canada

In February 1983, an epidemic of gastroenteritis affecting approximately 3000 persons occurred in a city of 6500 in Alberta. Search for a viral agent has so far been unrevealing. Illness was associated with consumption of water from the municipal system. The execution and monitoring of water treatment were faulty. The source of water in that system is a river whose pollution was augmented just before the epidemic by a discharge of raw sewage from a lift station of the municipal sewage collection system. A chain of causation in a gastrointestinal epidemic is illustrated, against which legislation for protection exists in the Clean Water Act.