Wednesday, October 10, 2012

WE CONTINUE TO DESTROY OUR ENVIRONMENT INCLUDING THE GRAND RIVER



The timing is quite superb. Back on September 3/12 I wrote here about multi million dollar upgrades to the Kitchener Sewage Treatment Plant and then again I posted an article dealing with upgrades to the Waterloo Treatment Plant on September 17/12. In those postings/articles while praising the political decision to spend taxpayers money to help our environment and Grand River; I also asked the obvious question. Are we being proactive here or merely reacting to degradation that's already happened? Well as an environmental colleague recently reminded me; politicians are highly reactive. If it isn't broken yet or in crisis they have hundreds of pet projects that are much more alluring and sexy than sewage treatment. Sure enough today's Waterloo Region Record tells the tale namely "Researchers blame fish mutations on local sewage".

These mutations are being blamed on estrogens in pharmaceuticals that are not removed from waste water by our sewage treatment plants. Interestingly as I've mentoned here before our regional annual drinking water reports also do not report on the presence of pharmaceuticals and many other chemicals. There are literally thousands of chemicals which may find their way into either the Grand River or groundwater which are either not tested for, or not reported on to the public. Many of these will indeed be removed from water via treatment but if we the public don't see more comprehensive listings of chemicals tested for, then how can we have confidence in our water?
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1 comment:

  1. Bev McDowellOctober 11, 2012 at 5:04 AM

    As it is public tax dollars that pay for this testing of our water, we the public have a right to know all of the results that are found from that testing. The Region of Waterloo should be posting ALL TEST RESULTS. What do we have to do to get them file a FOI request?

    As to your comment about "having confidence in our water"....In my opinion, not many do or we would not have such a large industry that is making millions of dollars selling bottled water to the public.

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