MUNICIPAL DRINKING WATER REPORTS - KITCHENER & CAMBRIDGE

Way back on March 7/20 I posted here about the City of Waterloo Annual (drinking) Water Report. These municipal reports focus on distribution issues such as lead, bacteria, chlorine levels etc. versus regional issues including the raw water supply sent to the different municipalities. Unfortunately they totally ignore asbestos fibres in the water from asbestos water pipes. While this is legal because our federal government have a vested interest in ignoring the issue nevertheless our regional and municipal governments should be stepping up. They are not doing so.

The Kitchener Distribution System has some unfortunate surprises. Firstly is page 3 which lists the Adverse Water Quality Incidents (AWQI) reported to the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. There are 26 of them during 2019. They include lead exceedances, low chlorine in the distribution system, way too many Total Coliform (bacteria), and even two Boil Water Advisory's (BWA). The Distribution System claims to have found zero E.Coli and one Total Coliform. The maximum Heterotrophic Plate Count (HPC) however is 500 Coliform Units (CFU) which is too high. Lead results in household/commercial plumbing range as high as 14.5 ug/l which exceeds the criteria of 10 ug/l. The distribution system has a maximum of 28.3 which also well exceeds the criteria of 10. Trihalomethane results are very good (i.e. low) however Haloacetic Acids (HAA) are nowhere to be found. That is not good.

The Cambridge Distribution System in my opinion has fewer nasty surprises at the municipal level. Do recall however the regional reports with various low level solvents in a number of wells with Trichloroethylene (TCE) being the most prevalent. Over $4 million is listed as maintenance expenses for water connections, water mains and hydrants. There were two Adverse Water quality Incidents with one being a very high Sodium result and the other was the presence of Total Coliform in the water. The maximum HPC result was 260 CFU. Lead exceedances were found in plumbing (private presumably) systems but not in the distribution system. In fact there were ten separate instances of lead exceeding one half the provincial criteria with five of those also exceeding the provincial criteria of ten parts per billion (10 ug/l). Both HAAs and THMs were at very good (i.e. low) levels.