MARYHILL WATER TREATMENT IN WOOLWICH TOWNSHIP

Yesterday's Woolwich Observer carries an article on the two different water systems and treatment systems in Maryhill, Ontario. Both systems are extremely small (180 & 140 people) and use common, everyday treatment systems. The Observer article is very upbeat and quotes both a Woolwich staffer and a Region of Waterloo employee who both unsurprisingly are wildly optimistic about this change in one of the treatment systems to bring it in line with the other one. I have in the past posted here about the two Maryhill systems as well as most of the others in Waterloo Region. My recollection has been that in the past there were many exceedances of either chlorine or chloramine in the two systems. This can be a result of raw water heavily contaminated with bacteria (Total Coliform & or E.Coli) requiring heavy duty chlorination to kill the bacteria. It can also be due to simple operational exceedances of the quantities required to get the job done. While both exceedances are health based issues, my understanding is that chloramine is actually preferable as a residual than chlorine. Chlorine is well known and long implicated in various adverse health outcomes including cancer. If that is accurate than all this bragging is mostly hot air and puffery as they may have two systems that can now be linked but the reality is that is because one of them has been downgraded to the lesser treatment system of the two. I fail to see the "improvement" in that hence the sales job on the local residents perhaps.

I had put this posting on SAVE while I did a little digging into the Region's Annual Drinking Water Reports for Maryhill. I also doublechecked my old postings here from years ago regarding the Maryhill system. I only went back to 2012 but what I found was no raw water bacteria issues at all. What the hell? Then why be dosing the crap out of the water whether with chlorine or chloramines? I also found that the chloramine exceedances were even worse back several years than in the last couple. Odd. I also noted my discontent with the lack of THM or trihalomethane readings in these reports. Chlorine produces THMs in conjunction with organics in the raw water. Chloramines greatly reduce THM formation and are this considered superior. Therefore I again repeat my skepticism that reverting back to the older chlorine treatment for half of Maryhill is no improvement for them whatsoever. So what is really going on there?