A COUPLE OF KITCHENER WELLFIELDS

The lack of information continues. These Annual (drinking water) Reports continue to be feel good, positive spin reports. Hence they are of little use to citizens and this is exactly as the province and municipalities want them. Afterall economic growth required cheap toxic waste disposal and there's no point now in crying over spilled milk, is there?

The Parkway Well System consists of three wells named K31, K32 and K33. They are located near the corner of Fairway Rd. and Manitou Dr.. Unfortunately there used to be a Deilcraft plant nearby which required soil remediation for Trichloroethylene (TCE) maybe fifteen years ago. That legacy lives on in low levels of TCE in these wells. This Deilcraft plant is not the same one that has been in the news lately on Shanley St. in Kitchener. It also has TCE in the sub-surface.

The raw water had a total of two detections of Total Coliforms (zero E.Coli) during 2016. While not ideal it is nevertheless light years better than many other wells in Waterloo Region regarding bacteria in the raw water. Well K31 was offline for five weeks during 2016 without explanation. That lack of explanation is worrisome and unacceptable.

Turbidity was as high as 3.2 NTU which is much too high. High Turbidity (murkiness/discolouration etc.) can make disinfection more difficult as bacteria can "hide" from disinfecting chlorine.

Sodium is a bizarre 201 mg/l or parts per million. Any results over 20 mg/l must be reported to the Public Health Dep't and the Ministry of Environment every five years. This reading is a prizewinner and that is not a good thing.

Glyphosate similar to all the other Region of Waterloo wells is at a Method Detection Limit of 25 parts per billion (ppb.) and that is a ridiculously high detection limit. Trihalomethanes (THM) results are not recorded in this Report despite the report clearly stating that the annual average of THM will be shown.

Chloramines like THMs are a disinfection (of bacteria) by-product. They also have a criteria they must not exceed which is 3 mg/l (ppm). While they don't exceed that number they are however at high enough concentrations to be included in the listing of parameters that exceed half the standard prescribed. They did so on thirteen occasions during 2016.

Possibly this Monday I will describe the results of the Strange St. Well System. It too has problems.