Friday, March 4, 2016

A TEMPORARY SWITCH OVER TO CITY OF WATERLOO WELLS



I expect that I will go back to the rest of the City of Cambridge wells tomorrow or next week. Today we will be looking at the City of Waterloo well system. It consists of the William St. Wellfield, the Erb St. Wellfield and W10, well sort of. We are advised in this year's Annual Report that W10 was offline for all of 2015. No reason or explanation is given whatsoever. W10 is located on the north-west side of Waterloo and further digging indicates that it has been offline since 2007. Would it kill the Region to have told us that? Would it kill them to give even a brief one sentence (preferably honest) explanation as to what the problem is or whether there even is a problem with this well?

The Erb St. Wellfield consists of wells W6A, W6B, W7 and W8. We are advised in this year's Annual Report that Well W6A was offline for all of 2015. No reason given. Again this report fails to advise the reader that in fact Well W6A has been shut down since 2013. There was also no explanation given then. Furthemore with more digging it appears that the long history of the Erb St. wells has included only wells W6A, W7 and W8. W6B appeared on the scene and in these reports firstly in 2012! One could surmise or assume that Well W6B was brought online to replace W6A but it would certainly be less worrisome if the Region were to include basic information in these reports as to why they are adding or dropping wells from longtime wellfields. There were a couple of Adverse Incidents in regards to the Contact Time of the disinfectant used to remove bacteria from the water during 2015. Mains were flushed, disinfection restored and resampling done. The actual raw water bacteria levels appear to be quite low thus I was a little surprised to see half a page of "Inorganic parameters that exceeded half the prescribed standard". These parameters were all Chloramines which are a disinfectant by-product and indeed are a human health issue.

The William St. wells are as bad as usual. They consist of four different wells with well W1B offline for five weeks in 2015. No explanation given. Turbidity (cloudiness) and chlorine levels are within specifications however Sodium is off the charts at 223 mg/litre. This is one of the highest readings I've seen anywhere within the Region of Waterloo. Trihalomethane levels are not reported and should be. These THMs are also a by-product of disinfection and a serious health issue. Advising that they can allegedly be found elsewhere is not helpful. Citizens have come to these Annual Reports to learn about their drinking water. The only good news I can give is that the test results are all up to date namely 2015. The bad news is both Chloramines and Trichloroethylene (TCE). Chloramine levels are not exceeding their individual health standard of 3 mg/l but there is almost a full page of results greater than half this standard. Combine that with TCE results constantly between 1.2 and 1.8 parts per billion (ppb) present in the treated water and you have the formula for trouble. No one, nowhere has any idea of the effects of multiple serious contaminants on the human body. These individual standards are meaningless for multiple toxic contaminants and both the Region of Waterloo and the Ontario Ministry of Environment know that full well. Basically the citizens of Waterloo, similar to those of Cambridge are guinea pigs with exposures to low level multiple contaminants in their drinking water. I won't even get started with all the high Method Detection Limits that are probably hiding other contaminants such as Glyphosate.

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