REVISITING THE MARYHILL WATER SYSTEM

Firstly a status update on the West Montrose water system. A week ago today I had a sit down meeting with Dan Kennalley and Woolwich Councillors Bauman and B.Bryant. I agreed to sending them a list of questions to be forwarded on to the Region of Waterloo. This I did very late Friday afternoon with a total of three pages of questions. Probably today or tomorrow I will send an e-mail asking the Councillors whether they've sent them on and if there's been any response whatsoever.

Back on March 8/14 I posted here about the two water systems in the village of Maryhill (Woolwich Township). While I mentioned troubling issues concerning chloramines in the one system I wasn't terribly specific. Since that time I have been doing my homework regarding bacteria and disinfection methods for municipal drinking water. I have since posted a few articles in regards to West Montrose and the very serious state of their water supply. Today I am focusing on the Maryhill Water Supply System not the Maryhill Heights System. Wells MH1 and MH2 have had increasing levels of chloramines in the last five years. While they are in a Table titled "...parameters that exceeded half the standard..." this is a very deceptive heading and possibly intentionally so. In fact their chloramine concentrations regularily exceed Ontario's Drinking Water Standards (ODWS). While they don't have as many exceedances as West Montrose do, nor as many detections of Coliform in their raw water; it appears as if their chloramine concentrations are even higher than West Montrose's. The standard is 3.0 mg/l or 3 parts per million. In the last few years they've had many concentrations above 4 mg/l and as high as 4.99 mg/l.

The Maryhill System has a different method of filtering their raw water than West Montrose's. Oddly West Montrose has Turbidity readings for both their raw water and their post filtered water. Maryhill do not. They have one reading (raw) and it is far in excess of the drinking water standards for Turbidity (ie. murkiness, lack of clarity). Turbid water can protect bacteria from disinfection by chlorine/chloramine and my suspicion is that this is why the Region are overchlorinating the water. Both high chlorine and chloramines can lead to products of disinfection including NDMA in the treated water. West Montrose are currently receiving a new disifection system (UV irradiation) with a whole new source of water a couple of years away. Maryhill deserves the same upgrades.