REGION'S WATER RESULTS AND THEIR RESPONSE TO ME

The week before last I spoke at Woolwich Council in regards to the Region of Waterloo's Annual Drinking Water Reports. In a nutshell my argument was that there were far too many common and ubiquitous chemical contamianants in our drinking water which the Region either wasn't testing for or certainly weren't publishing the results thereof. Mr. Peter Clarke of the Region did respond to my questions of March 18/11 in a timely fashion and I simply have been tardy in reporting his responses here. Back on March 19/11 I did report on having sent my letter to Mr. Clarke with numerous questions enclosed. I must also comment on a short article in the Elmira Independent from two days ago, titled "Few concerns over water tests". The refernces to concerns is presumably within the body of these reports because again yours truly has lots of concerns and they were presented to Council. One thing I am slowly learning is that often responses by the appropriate authorities do not occur instantaneously. In my presentation (or at least in my written one) I strongly recommended again that the Township have a need for a hydrogeologist who is not on loan from either the M.O.E. or the Region. It is my confident hope that this suggestion has been heard and acted upon.

Getting back to Mr. Clarke of the Region, his answers were a mixed bag. Peter did point out my mistake in identifying entry point locations and water storage facilities incorrectly. He also gave the rationale for Method Detection Limits used for different contaminants. While I don't wish to criticize what may well be an honest answer, nevertheless the answer is totally unacceptable. Allowing individual laboratories to set their own MDL's and accepting them because they are only 10% of the Drinking Water Standard is ridiculous. Also there are several MDL's that still don't meet this arbitrary and unacceptable standard. Also I can only characterize Peter's repeated answer that various toxic contaminants are not reported because the Ontario Ministry of the Environment doesn't require it or there are no other regulatory requirements to report Dioxins, radiological readings, NDMA, Toluene, XYLENES, Chloroacetic acids etc. etc. as also totally unacceptable. All in all I believe that my numerous postings here in the Advocate make much more common sense than the responses I've received from the Region. Our drinking water can not be deemed "SAFE" until so much more is carefully tested for and reported to the public.