REGION OF WATERLOO ANNUAL REPORTS - WOOLWICH TOWNSHIP

The Region have all of four Annual Reports for Woolwich Township in 2019 namely two for the village of Conestogo and two for the village of Maryhill. The village of West Montrose has been dropped because all its water now comes from a pipeline from Conestogo which of course is supplied by a pipeline from St. Jacobs and the Region's IUS (Integrated Urban System).

It is of course a little bizarre having separate reports (Regional and Municipal) for the very same water supply however that complicates things and may be the preferred choice of politicians who hide behind paid experts and prefer the public stay confused or uninformed. Or maybe there are legitimate reasons.

The Maryhill Water Supply System consists of two separate systems. The one has two wells named MH1 and MH2. The other is called Marhhill Village Heights system and consists of two wells named MH3 and MH4A. The first system has zero E.Coli and zero Total Coliform found in both the raw and treated water which is good however there appear to be two Coliforms found in another testing method known as Heterotrophic Plate Count (HPC). I must assume that the HPC in the treated water is taken at a different time than the other testing of the treated water which had a result of zero. The wells MH1 and MH2 have an issue with a Sodium reading of 84.8 mg/l which is more than quadruple the recommended maximum of 20 mg/l. Three of four of the Nitrate test results in these wells (MH1 & MH2) are very low with a fourth test result of 2.51 which while still below the drinking standards nonetheless is still high. Finally there are ten industrial/agricultural chemicals including Glyphosate (Roundup) with what I view as very high Method Detection Limits (MDL) in the treated drinking water.

The Maryhill Village Heights system (MH3 & MH4A) had one formal Adverse Water Quality Incident (AWQI) with Contact Time (CT) of chlorine being inadequate in October 2019. CT refers to a standard of 3mg/l of chlorine per minute of contact with the treated water in the system for the purpose of maintaining disinfection (i.e. killing bacteria). Similar to the other system the raw and treated water had zero bacteria present when tested but one CFU (Coliform Units probably-the Region still fails to define all the acronyms that they use) was found by the HPC method. Sodium is much lower in this system although Nitrates in three of four samples were higher although still below the drinking water standard. There were ten industrial/agricultural chemicals with high Method Detection Limits (MDL) including Glyphosate at a ridiculous MDL of 25 parts per billion (ug/l).

Tomorrow I may discuss the Conestogo water results.