REGION OF WATERLOO ANNUAL REPORTS - CITY OF WATERLOO

Last Saturday I posted here about the annual municipal water quality report for the City of Waterloo. Today's posting is about the Region of Waterloo's Annual Reports for the three well systems in Waterloo namely Well W10, the Erb St. Wells (W6B, W7, W8) and the William St. Wells (W1B, W1C, W2, W3). To say that there are major issues is an understatement.

Well W10 seems the least problematic of the three systems. It had four Adverse Water Quality Incidents in 2019 all regarding excessive chloramines concentrations in the drinking water. The watermains were flushed and then resampled. Sodium was a little high at 35.5 milligrams per litre (mg/l) with an advisory concentration of only 20 mg/l. There were ten industrial chemicals that in my opinion have Method Detection Limits (MDL) that are far too high. Yes they are designated as Non Detect (ND) but all at MDLs of 1 part per billion or higher with one (Glyphosate/Roundup) at a ridiculous 25 parts per billion detection limit.

The Erb St. wells consist of W6B, W7 and W8. Well W6A was offline for all of 2019 which is a bad sign. There was one Adverse Water Quality Incident during 2019 which consisted of a low Contact Time (CT) of chlorine in the drinking water. The criteria is 3mg/L*min which means the concentration of chlorine in mg/l multiplied by the contact time in minutes. Nitrates concentrations were a little high although still below the provincial criteria. Chloramine concentrations were also high and were flagged as exceeding half the standard prescribed provincially. Nine industrial/agricultural chemicals had high Method Detection Limits (MDL)with Glyphosate again being ridiculously so. Lastly Dichloromethane was detected in the treated drinking water at 2.02 parts per billion (ppb) which is bad news although it was below the provincial criteria. I would classify this detection as unusual although Dichloromethane is one of the chemicals routinely tested with high MDL's which such high MDLs I consider a possible attempt to reduce detections of industrial/agricultural chemicals in our drinking water.

The William St. wellfield I consider the worst of the bunch. In fact shutdown times for the various wells during 2019 included wells W1B and W2 being offline for 12 weeks, well W1C offline for 18 weeks, well W3 offline for all of 2019 and finally the entire wellfield (all wells shut down and offline) for 14 weeks in 2019. Without an adequate and intelligent rationale by the Region for these huge shutdowns I suspect that this is the Region of Waterloo playing musical chairs/wells and removing wells from use as their contaminant concentrations become too high. Sodium concentrations are a ridiculous 228 mg/l with the advisory level being 20 mg/l. Nitrates are also a concern although below the applicable criteria. There are also ten industrial/agricultural chemicals with MDLs of 1 part per billion which is too many chemicals at too high of a detection limit. Glyphosate is also still at the ridiculous 25 parts per billion (ug/l) MDL. Keep in mind that all these criteria are set on the ridiculous assumption of only one contaminant per litre of clean water. In other words our health authorities haven't a clue as to what the health implications are of multiple low level contaminants simultaneously in our water supply. For the cherry on top of all of this we also have trichloroethylene (TCE) concentrations below the drinking water standard throughout the entire year. These TCE low level concentrations (likely due to careful dilution with less contaminated wells) have been ongoing literally for decades. Lastly chloramine concentrations were also flagged as exceeding half the standard prescribed provincially.

Now take all these issues together by mixing these wells all into the Distribution System for the City of Waterloo. Short term everything is likely O.K. but long term residents are drinking water with multiple contaminants and issues.