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Will Canada Go Dry as Drinking Water Woes Continue?

Following a flood of bad news, many Canadians find themselves wondering whether and when the country's widening drinking water woes will be solved. Concerns arose last May, when officials determined that Escherichia coli O157:H7 from cow manure was contaminating the water supply of Walkerton, a town in Ontario, killing 7 and causing 2,000 illnesses. More recently, officials reported that drinking water treatment plants throughout Ontario are riddled with quality problems, putting hundreds of thousands of residents at risk. They also reported that almost 10% of the water treatment plants used by First Nation (Native Canadian) tribes throughout Canada do not meet government safety guidelines.

In June 2000, following the Walkerton incident, the Ontario Environment Ministry began reviewing all 645 municipal waterworks in the province. Ministry inspectors found deficiencies in 357 of those facilities. Common problems include improper maintenance of disinfection equipment, failure to take the required number of monitoring samples to properly gauge the success of disinfection, and noncertified or poorly trained operating personnel.

Along with these deficiencies, inspectors found in drinking water "unacceptably high numbers" of coliform bacteria—typically, nonpathogenic E. coli, whose detection serves in such analysis as "a canary in a coal mine." Canadian officials do not check water for Cryptosporidium and Giardia, waterborne protozoans that can cause serious illness, or for viruses. "This is an area where the Canadian Drinking Water Quality Guidelines are missing a few pages," says Hans Peterson, executive director of the Safe Drinking Water Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving rural drinking water quality. He points out that "most waterborne illnesses in the United States are now attributed to viruses."

Officials ordered corrective action for most of those defective plants, and Environment Minister Dan Newman intends "to maintain vigilance by conducting these inspections every year." However, some critics are not yet satisfied. "It's totally unacceptable that so many Ontario water plants are operating out of compliance with regulations, a reflection that no one has been monitoring them for six years," says Stewart Elgie, a lawyer with the Sierra Legal Defense Fund environmental group. He and others also criticize the Ontario government for cutting pollution-control budgets, a policy that they believe led to the Walkerton calamity.

Health Canada and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs also recently determined that 79 of the 800 First Nation drinking water treatment plants throughout the country have higher-than-acceptable limits for coliforms or E. coli. Nearly half the affected plants are in Saskatchewan. One of those plants—the one serving the Yellowquill First Nation tribe—has been operating so poorly that officials issued a "boil water" order that has remained in effect for 4 years. And in British Columbia, some 27 tribes whose water plants are in similarly poor condition have been following boil orders for at least several months.

Funding to maintain, upgrade, and certify First Nations drinking water treatment plant equipment has not kept pace with the growth and increased drinking water demand of many First Nations communities, says Gilles Rochon, director general for community development for Indian Affairs. Infrastructure difficulties notwithstanding, The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs report points to poorly trained water treatment plant personnel and concludes that weak federal policies regarding plant operation are to blame for deterioration throughout this segment of the drinking water system. Those policies are under review, and efforts are also under way to improve the training of those who operate such plants, according to Rochon.

Brian Hoyle
Brian Hoyle is a freelance science writer based in Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada.