How Vulnerable are Ottawa’s Drinking Water Intake Zones?
By Meredith Brown, Ottawa Riverkeeper - Tuesday, March 30, 2010
In October of 2006, the Clean Water Act became law and Ontario began spending millions of dollars to protect your drinking water (municipal tap water). The Province delegated local conservation authorities to form Source Protection Committees (SPCs) and these committees were given the incredibly important and challenging task of preparing a source protection plan for their sub-watersheds.
Since 2007, Ottawa Riverkeeper has been sitting on the local SPC for Mississippi-Rideau, representing the public interest and bringing a consistent message to the table that we must be precautionary and science-based if we truly wish to protect drinking water in communities such as Ottawa, Smiths Falls, Perth, Carleton Place and more.
Mary Trudeau, a professional engineer with decades of experience in water policy and infrastructure has been representing Ottawa Riverkeeper at our local SPC table. Mary is dedicating her time to help develop a science-based plan that protects public health and safety.
Mary has grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of technically skilled reviewers on the SPC and has brought to my attention some serious flaws with the methodology (and lack of clarity between science and policy choices) being used to determine the vulnerability scores for each surface water intake zone. The vulnerability scores are the framework or building blocks for a good source water protection plan. The final vulnerability score establishes the basis for land use decisions within the source protection area. In other words, these scores determine what we can and can’t do in areas that are close to our drinking water intakes.
The SPC is now at this crucial step in the multi-year process and they are seeking input from the public. Here is your chance to have your say, yet unfortunately most of this debate is very technical and there has been nothing written in clear language to prepare the public for the upcoming consultations! Unless you have attended all the public meetings and/or read through the thousands of pages of technical reports, it is difficult to be engaged or even to know what is being decided.
Let me give you an example that highlights one of our concerns. The City of Ottawa has two water intakes on the Ottawa River (Britannia and Lemieux) and the areas around these intakes have been designated, as for all surface water intakes in the province, as Intake Protection Zones 1, 2 and 3. Intake Protection Zone 1 (IPZ-1) is defined by the province as the area within 200 meters of the intake. It is given the highest “area vulnerability rating” of 10 (out of 10). This makes sense: you spill something here and it gets into our drinking water really fast. Intake Protection Zone 2 (IPZ-2) is an area immediately adjacent and upstream of IPZ-1: if you were to spill a substance in this zone, it would take a maximum of 2 hours to reach the water intake. This zone is basically the downtown core of Ottawa. One assumption that has been made, that I do not agree with, is this: if there is a spill in this intake zone, it will be reported in under 2 hours. I hate to rain on the optimists’ parade here…but in my experience it is rare that spills are reported within an hour or two. Fortunately the City only needs 5 or 10 minutes to shut down the water intake at the plant. However, there are some areas in this intake zone where travel time to the intake is significantly less than 2 hours. Are you feeling protected yet?
It gets worse but there is math involved. If I skip a bunch of the math and assumptions that have been made, what you need to know is this: the consultants and the SPC have agreed that the intake protection zone 2 for Ottawa should be given a vulnerability score of 8. This is significant because the SPC has very little authority over what activities can take place in areas with a score of 8. If the vulnerability score is 9 or 10, there are over a dozen activities that the province has identified as being a threat to drinking water and are not allowed within those zones. However, in the IPZ-2 for the City of Ottawa, now there are only 2 activities that can be prohibited in this area by the SPC (the application of pesticides to the land and the establishment of a wastewater treatment plant). With this score, for example, the SPC has no authority to manage the storage of pesticides, snow storage (a significant source of pollutants that collect all winter), road salt storage, among other activities.
Does this make intuitive sense to you? It certainly doesn’t make sense to folks who study risk assessment. Ottawa Riverkeeper believes that this methodology undermines a precautionary and science-based approach to protecting our drinking water source.
To summarize, here are ORKs primary concerns with this phase of the process:
1) The methodology being used to determine vulnerability scores in the intake zones is not precautionary, nor is it clear which elements are science-based and which are based on the whim of consultants. The methodology is fundamentally flawed, yet the committee is forging ahead in order to meet Provincial timelines (Ottawa Riverkeeper and one other committee member dissented on the decision for the report going to public consultation).
2) The use of arbitrary weightings in an arbitrary formula has resulted in a low vulnerability score (8) for the IPZ-2 in Ottawa. In a zone where spills can reach our water intake in two hours or less, we should be more precautionary.
3) Future weather patterns (i.e. climate change) were not taken into account when river flows and water levels were analyzed and consideration was not given to our aging sewer infrastructure; hence the vulnerability scores do not adequately reflect the risk to our drinking water sources in the future.
4) Hired consultants who are working very closely with the City of Ottawa are making important decisions that will impact residents of Ottawa. Most members of the SPC do not have the technical background to analytically review the methods used to determine the vulnerability scores. Our own independent experts have found fundamental flaws in the methodology and although they have been “listened to”, no significant changes have been made to address their concerns.
I wish to make one further reflection: each SPC throughout the Province has hired a consultant to develop a method to establish vulnerability scores. I shake my head and wonder why we are not developing one method to be used consistently across the Province? Variables would differ across regions; however the method used could easily be universal. It certainly would have cost tax payers a lot less money to make the method consistent across SPCs.
As the Ottawa Riverkeeper, it is my responsibility to bring this information to the public and to encourage participation in shaping decisions that will affect how much emphasis we place on protecting our drinking water source, the Ottawa River.
I urge you to take action on this issue of utmost importance. You can:
1) Attend the Open House
March 31, 2010
Protecting Ottawa’s Drinking Water
Ron Kolbus Lakeside Centre
102 Greenview Ave, Britannia Park, Ottawa
(north of Carling and Pinecrest)
4pm to 8pm, presentation at 6:30pm
2) Submit Comments to the SPC
Written comments due April 16, 2010
Mississippi-Rideau Source Protection Region
3889 Rideau Valley Drive, P.O. Box 599
Manotick ON K4M 1A5
Tel. 1-613-692-3571 or 1-800-267-3504
Fax 1-613-692-0831
spcadmin@mrsourcewater.ca
3) Review the technical report for all the exciting details (You have to scroll down to page 18 to find the report).
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