REGION OF WATERLOO 2021 ANNUAL (WATER) REPORT

The above date is correct. These water reports are produced at the end of the previous year and generally in my opinion are both produced in order to comply with the Ontario Safe Drinking Water Act and for public relations purposes. I believe that the Region of Waterloo work hard within political constraints to provide good qual;ity drinking water. The problem of course is those "political constraints" and the number of regional councillors who are more concerned with steady political employment than they are with the health and safety of our citizens. ............................................................................................................... Today I'm going to discuss the 2021 Annual Report for the Middleton Well System in Cambridge. What an expensive and unhealthy water source the Middleton has been for many decades solely due to politicians' penchant to go easy on industrial polluters. Industrial polluters who of course provide employment and a tax base for our local governments. It's a classic case of shutting the farm gate after the horses have bolted. In this case the "horses" are DNAPL (dense non aqueous phase liquids) and to be specific the DNAPL chemical is Trichloroethylene (TCE) the very same chemical that Northstar Aerospace so egregiously dumped and spilled into the Bishop St. community causing immense human health suffering. In the Middleton Wellfield case the obvious source would be Canadian General Tower although I have had an informed professional advise me otherwise. Other suggestions include a nearby drycleaners from the days of TCE being a common dry cleaning fluid. .......................................................................................................................... There was over a third of a million dollars spent on electrical and software upgrades for Well Houses during 2021. This is a drop in the bucket overall for this wellfield and it's highly extensive and expensive treatment facilities necessary to remove toxic contaminants from the grossly polluted groundwater. Only treatment of Grand River water is more expensive. The raw water is both ground and surface water (Grand River) and it is the surface water that contributes bacteria, both E.Coli and Total Coliform, to the raw water input. This is removed via chlorine in one form or the other. Sodium is way too high (140 mg/l) and greatly exceeds the recommended level of 20 mg/l. The vast majority of industrial solvents and pesticides are Non_Detect however some are at far too a Method Detection Limit. In fact a total of nine chemicals are at Non-Detect with Method detcetion Limts (MDL) at or above 1 ug/l. Glyphosate is at a ridiculous MDL of 25 ug/l and this most likely is an administrative method of hiding exactly how much Glyphosate (Roundup) is now in our groundwater from excessive agricultural and residential use. ...................................................................................................................... Trichlorothylene (TCE) concentrations are scary stuff. Yes courtesy of expensive treatment combined with dilution from other wells in the Cambridge Wellfield System, the concentrations are below the Ontario Drinking Water Standards (ODWS). One is at 1.7 ug/l (parts per billion) and several in and around 1.5 ug/l or ppb. It is the ongoing longterm presence in Cambridge drinking water that concerns me. Combine that with zero knowledge of interactions with other chemicals (glyphosate for example) and I am very doubtful of the longterm health and safety of drinking water from this source. This wellfield as well as one in Waterloo (William St.) are a screaming indictment of past industrial practices allowing TCE seepage, leakage or dumping into the ground. It literally stays for decades to centuries in the groundwater.