KITCHENER ANNUAL WATER QUALITY REPORT

There was a notice of this report's availability in the K-W Record late this week. It is available either at Kitchener Utilities, 83 Elmsdale Dr. or online at www.kitchenerutilities.ca . I went the internet route and was not disappointed. I expected a crap report and that's exactly what it is. The Regional Annual Water Quality Reports are bad enough with the amounts of information and misinformation, but this City report was really bad, essentially over a page of chemical parameters including solvents, pesticides, P.C.B.'s etc. are just blank. No explanation, just blank. At the same time there were two surprises for me. The readings for lead had seven exceedances. My understanding is that the maximum level for lead is supposed to be 10 ug/l or 10 parts per billion (ppb). These exceedances went up to 231 ppb. That is very bad . Secondly I was astounded to see ""Table 1- Adverse Water Quality Incident Summary-January 1 to December 31, 2010". This table is 1 1/3 pages long and the Adverse Type is referred to as Low Chlorine. The sample dates start in January 2010 and the only month without an Adverse listing is December. What the hell is going on here? If this "Low Chlorine" refers to chlorine residuals then this is serious. Low chlorine residuals were the basic cause of the Walkerton disaster. Yes bacteria got into the system but it was the incompetence and ignorance of all involved in not maintaining proper chlorine residual levels in the distribution system which resulted in the bacterial outbreak and infection. In a nutshell this Report is typical of both Municipal and Regional reports in that it is evasive, non comprehensive and exceedingly unclear. In particular a detailed explanation should be given for exactly what "Low Chlorine" means and if it is what I suspect than Kitchener are flirting with an E-coli or other bacterial outbreak.