FIGURES CAN LIE & LIARS CAN FIGURE

I've been looking through the "Chief Drinking Water Inspector Annual Report 2014-2015". At first blush it seems pretty impressive. Afterall when you read words such as "multi-barrier approach", "stringent health-based standards"and highly trained operators", it certainly gives a good impression. Then a glance at the opening statistics claiming that 99.8% of half a million drinking water tests "...met Ontario's strict drinking water quality standards."and one should feel confident in our water systems.

There are a couple of problems however. Firstly Ontario does not have "strict drinking water quality standards". Glyphosate's has a detection limit of 25 parts per billion (ppb.) which is ridiculously high. Many other chemicals have detection limits of .5 ppb. or higher. Trichloroethylene here in Waterloo Region is in our drinking water at 1-3 ppb. in a number of different wellfields. Our drinking water standard says that's O.K. but there are American jurisdictions whose standards do not allow that. Also the annual Region of Waterloo well reports do not even tell us what the standards are. They give a less than figure (<) and a number and simply advise if it is an exceedance or not. How close it is to the standard we are left to guess.

Another basic problem is that each and every drinking standard for a chemical is based upon the false and unrealistic assumption that that chemical alone is in a litre of pure water. It is not; it is mixed in with numerous different contaminants all allegedly below their individual standards. No one anywhere has any idea of the synergistic effects of differing contaminants on human health.

The number of chemical compounds are increasing exponentially and Ontario's drinking water standards have not kept pace. We simply are only testing for a miniscule number of the possible industrial chemicals released into the air, water and soil every year. Even common industrial chemicals such as NDMA, toluene and xylenes are not reported on here in Waterloo region's Annual Drinking water reports.

All this information was presented to Woolwich Council early in 2015. They publicly promised to take these concerns to both the Region of Waterloo and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. I have had zero feedback from the Township since and that is par for the course.