Riverkeeper’s Point of View - Community Water Supply
- Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Do you know where your tap water comes from? How much of it there is? How often it is tested or how easily it could become contaminated? To many people, these questions are of little consequence – provided, of course, that when they turn on their taps, the water keeps flowing and when they drink their water, they don’t get sick.
In light of the recent ban on all outdoor water use imposed by the City of Ottawa in the neighbourhoods of Riverside South, Barrhaven and Manotick, we are beginning to get an idea of why these questions are of such great importance. Many are asking themselves how it’s possible for a city like Ottawa, which is surrounded by a myriad of lakes, rivers and streams and which is underlain by some of the province’s cleanest, healthiest groundwater, could possibly have ended up in a position where it was forced to restrict the use of municipally supplied water. While the ban was imposed to address issues with aging infrastructure and not because of a shortage of the water supply itself, it demonstrates just one of the many ways in which our water supply stands to be affected by our overwhelming dependence on it.
Across the river in the small village of Wakefield, locals have been urging their municipal and provincial governments to gather information about the Wakefield Spring, where over 5,000 people in the community routinely fill jugs for drinking water. Even in the absence of scientific studies on the groundwater hydrology of the area, developments in the area are moving forward and are threatening the quality of the pristine groundwater underlying the region. The ongoing expansion of Highway 5 could affect the shallow aquifer that feeds the spring, and a new Styrofoam factory being built has plans to install a leaching bed to treat its wastewater – this leaching bed will leach polluted water into the Vallée Verde aquifer that could very well be connected to the Wakefield Spring. The trouble is, without proper studies on the connectivity of these aquifers, no one can say for certain how these new developments will affect the region’s drinking water supply.
It is an unfortunate reality that it often takes a water shortage or even a tragedy before people start paying attention to where their water comes from, and why it is so important to protect it. Since the events that unfolded in May 2000 in the town of Walkerton, ON, where at least seven people died from water polluted by E.coli bacteria and thousands of residents fell ill, our government agencies have been working towards being more proactive when it comes to protecting community water supply. One of the more notable outcomes of the Walkerton Inquiry of 2002 was the conclusion that protecting our drinking water at the source is one of the best ways to ensure safe, healthy drinking water for our communities. Source water protection is largely based on understanding the threats to the local water supply and being proactive rather than reactive about the types of activities or industries that we allow within our water supply zones.
In Ontario, the Ministry of the Environment established the Clean Water Act in 2006. The Act requires communities in Source Protection Areas to establish and implement a Source Water Protection Plan (SWPP) for municipal drinking water, which assesses existing and potential threats to the water supply and determines the actions necessary to address these threats. The development of SWPPs is a multi-stakeholder process that involves a significant amount of consultation with municipalities, conservation authorities, industry, businesses, and the general public. Source Water Protection Committees have been established in each of the source protection areas in the province to work on developing and implementing these plans, and to keep the public informed and involved in the entire process. These committees regularly schedule public consultation meetings which are open to everyone, where the public can learn about the watershed they live in and what is being done to protect community water supply.
In Québec, the Ministry of Environment, Sustainable Development and Parks has created the Groundwater Catchment Regulation under the Environmental Quality Act, whose purpose is to protect the quality and quantity of groundwater intended for human consumption. Under this regulation, any groundwater catchment (spring, aquifer, etc.) which supplies water to more than 20 people or which has a storage capacity of greater than 75 cubic metres, is required by law to have a source water protection plan. It is also necessary to obtain provincial approval to continue drawing water from these sources.
While these efforts are certainly admirable, there are still significant regulatory gaps that we cannot afford to overlook. In Ontario, Source Water Protection Plans exist only in areas where there is an operational Conservation Authority, and given the focus on municipal water supply only, they do not encompass water supply to individual wells that are not a part of a municipal system. In Québec, the regulations protect groundwater supply but do not address surface water intake, and like the Ontario regulations for source water protection, do not govern individual wells. What’s more, municipalities like Ottawa and Gatineau that draw their water from the Ottawa River have no interprovincial source protection committees to coordinate efforts on both sides of the river.
We cannot continue to take our water supply for granted. Since we all have a vested interest in protecting these resources, it is important that we all make sure to keep ourselves as informed and as involved as possible. Attend a Source Water Protection Committee meeting, find out where your water is coming from and what threats to it exist, encourage your local, regional and provincial governments to be more proactive in their roles as legal authorities in water protection, and get involved in your community to help spread the word about the importance of protecting and conserving your community water supply.
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