WEST MONTROSE WATER APPEARS LESS UNSAFE THAN A YEAR AGO

OMG is this the second day in a row I have to say something nice about Councillor Mark Bauman? The discription I received of the discussion at Woolwich Council last Tuesday indicates that Mark was the only Councillor who asked questions about the Drinking Water Engineering Report. I was advised that Mark specifically asked questions about West Montrose water. While I'm on a Councillor back patting jag, kudos to Councillor Merlihan. You campaigned on reducing financial waste municipally and by gosh you are doing your best in that regard.

There have been a couple of e-mails back and forth this week regarding drinking water quality in West Montrose. While their wells remain contaminated with E.Coli, shades of past Walkerton and present aboriginal third world conditions in northern Ontario, this year's report doesn't look as horrible as last year's and some previous to that. Nevertheless there is unsurprisingly still E.Coli detections in their raw water. As they are still on their own wells, downgradient of their septic systems, this is unlikely to change. What was supposed to change was a pipeline over to Conestogo to either use their water or water from St.Jacobs also via a pipeline. Apparently there is no urgency to improve West Montrose water as long as tanker trucks are diluting and reducing the use of their wells and as long as the media remain toothless on this subject.

Spring is here and April rains may yet cause the disaster that has been waiting in the wings for years. If not, cancer will probably do the job based upon the decades long, high THM (trihalomethanes) and Chloramines concentrations. Finally it would be nice if the Region of Waterloo would also test for the other toxic products of disinfection (NDMA, HAA). Keep in mind all drinking water standards are based upon the ridiculous assumption that each contaminant is found in isolation versus the real world reality of multiple contaminants simultaneously.