CENTRE WELLINGTON DRINKING WATER & TRICHLOROETHYLENE (TCE)

Probably it's been nearly ten years since I looked at the drinking water in Centre Wellington Township which includes the towns of Fergus and Elora. I do know that back on June 17, 2010 I was shocked with the trichloroethylene (TCE) and other solvents in some of the Fergus wells and posted about them here. It was my understanding then and now that the source of the TCE (& likely other solvents) was the former General Steel Wares (GSW) factory in Fergus. My least favourite environmental consulting & engineering company, Conestoga Rovers & Assoc. (CRA), were their consultants at the time. Unknown to many, CRA actually won themselves a rap on the knuckles from the Ontario Ministry of Environment for discharges from GSW (Fergus) into the Grand River. TSk tsk.

Following are my comments about the Annual Water Report for Centre Wellington Township, dated February 2020:

Both raw and treated water is clear of both E.Coli and Total Coliform bacteria. That is both good and appropriate. Heterotrophic Plate Count however had a maximum value of 213 coliform units which is very high. A laboratory comment on that occasion stated "no data, overgrown with HPC". That certainly appears problematic although the HPC analytical result the following week was 0. Weird?

Chlorine and Turbidity (water murkiness) results are acceptable. Sodium results were a little high on two occasions out of eight but wait, stop the presses, the dates for these samples are January 19, 2016. What the hell, 2016 results are being used in a report dated 2020. Come on! Similarly early 2018 results were used in Table 16 titled Fergus Well 1 Schedule 24 Organic Results. These 2018 results showed all organic chemicals to be below the detection limits.

Table 24 with Lead results from 2019 showed all samples taken either on March 28/19 or September 11/19 to be well below the criteria for lead in drinking water.

Interestingly Table 26 had four results for TCE (raw water) from Fergus Well 1 taken in 2019. Two of the four exceeded the Ontario standard/criteria for TCE with the one being just over double the standard. WOW, that is bad! Either the treatment system is very good at removing TCE (unlikely) or more likely the results of the other groundwater wells are better and hence they are diluting the TCE concentrations to below the provincial criteria at least some of the time. Also keep in mind that while there are a total of nine groundwater wells as part of the system (6 from Fergus and 3 from Elora), we are advised that Fergus Well 2 is currently off line.

What I find curious is the names of the nine groundwater wells that make up this system. They are Fergus Well 1,2,4,5,6,7 and Elora Well 1,3,4. Hmm seems to me that there may be more than just Fergus Well 2 off line. Pray tell where Fergus Well 3 is as well as what happened to Elora Well 2?

It is long past time that these Annual Reports advised citizens of what specifically has happened to missing wells in their water systems. Maybe on occasion wells are shut down for reasons that are not alarming or concerning. On the other hand if water managers are playing musical wells with contaminated source water (groundwater), citizens have a right to know how precarious their water systems are.