ANNUAL WATER REPORTS HAVE TOO MUCH WIGGLE ROOM

This is typical of provincial government legislation. While ostensibly addressing a social need there are always vested interests out there who do not want to be embarassed by having their failures flagrantly exposed. Hence the Clean Water Act helps the public while at the same time allowing municipalities lots of wiggle room so they don't have to admit to their citizens that their drinking water is contaminated. Generally speaking contaminated by negligent industries maximizing their profits by intentionally mismanaging their production wastes. .................................................................................................... The three wellfields in Hespeler (Cambridge) are an example. Initially H1, H2 and H3 were the groundwater wells providing drinking water to areas of Hespeler. Then due to industrial contamination (perhaps Inglis, perhaps textile mills or others) these former industries cheaply dumped their wastes whether into the Speed River or into handy pits and lagoons. The result today are wells that are routinely shut down for months at a time. As additional wells have been added to the mix namely H3A, H4A and H5A a certain flexibility and ability to "managa" the groundwater issues has eviolved. The Region of Waterloo do not advertise their use of contaminated aquifers however on their behalf the Ontario Ministry of Environment have publicly in Elmira confirmed the use of various strategies to "manage" these contaminated aquifers. Pumping to waste using an "interceptor" well is one such strategy. This was used in Elmira around 1990-92 as well E2, closest to Uniroyal, was used to intercept contaminated groundwater courtesy of Uniroyal Chemical and dump it into the Canagagigue Creek. ...................................................................................................................................... In Hespeler one can look at the Annual Reports and see the results as even new wells are shut down for periods of time. My expectation is that the plume of contaminants is pulled towards the well that is pumping steadily and then as the plume arrives that well is shut down and the other well starts up. Back and forth pumping can do wonders but in my opinion is a disaster waiting to happen with a little bit of human error. Well H3 was offline for 26 weeks in 2021 and well H3A was offline for 25 weeks in 2021. No sign any longer of Well H4 but Well H4A was shut down for 2 weeks in 2021 which might well be for normal maintenance. Well H5 was offline for 41 weeks last year and Well H5A was offline for 13 weeks last year. With water restrictions and guidelines ongoing every summer it's pretty clear that these wells are being "managed" to avoid the worst of the contamination. My suspicion is the old relaible and decades to centuries in duration Trichloroethylene (TCE) may be part of the problem despite alleged Non-Detects in the sampling. Afterall if you are only publishing one sampling event per year surely you can find one Non-Detect. Also keep in mind that the Region don't even sample every year. Wells H4, H5 and H5A were last tested in 2020. Yes H3 and H3A were tested in 2021.