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While the federal and provincial governments spend millions of dollars to help Russell Township residents get water from the City of Ottawa, Alison Newson sits in her rural Ottawa home and wonders why no one is helping her. She hasn’t had potable water for months.
Ms. Newson and her husband, Jeff, moved from busy Pinecrest Road in September to their dream home in Dunrobin, a 2,200-square-foot split level house on four acres. They love the country. This is where they want to raise their children.
Early in November, they awoke one day to find their well had run dry.
So they called in a well-drilling company. They drilled and drilled, down 120 metres in addition to the 30 metres of the original well. They drilled so far they hit granite. No water. They had the well fractured; a process whereby water is injected into the well at high pressure to improve the rock fissures and increase the flow of water. The result was a little water, but so salty it’s like ocean water. All they can use it for is laundry and it ruins the clothes.
The Newsons have spent $18,000 trying to fix the problem, to no avail.
They shower at their parents’ houses in urban Ottawa, bring buckets for the toilet and wonder what will happen when the baby arrives. Ms. Newson, 31, is 41/2 months pregnant.
“Our property is worth nothing if we don’t have potable water,” says Ms. Newson, who, with her husband, spent close to $300,000 for the house. “We’ve eaten off paper plates for three months.” They’ve been told their prospect of well water is “a lost cause.”
While the Newsons’ situation is severe, it illustrates a larger question: Should the 26 villages in the rural portions of Ottawa get water and sewer pipes?
After last week’s news that Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien had signed a deal to pipe water 28 kilometres east of the city to Russell, Cumberland Councillor Rob Jellett heard from people in Navan village, which is inside the city, asking why the city can’t get water to them as well.
Mr. Jellett said another community where water has been a big issue is Cumberland village, where residents were keen on getting municipal water supply until they discovered the cost of running the system to their neighbourhoods would be huge.
Bruce Webster, president of the Rural Council of Ottawa-Carleton, says rural communities used to be eligible for provincial government help for big projects like water pipes. But that help is gone now since huge areas around urban Ottawa are now within the city boundaries.
Russell Township got $4.5 million from the federal and provincial governments for the water pipeline from Ottawa, but communities inside Ottawa are ineligible for such help.
Many rural residents are keen to keep their well systems, which don’t involve paying anything to the city and often have good quality water. West Carleton Councillor Eli El Chantiry says his neighbours in Constance Bay are quite content to keep using well water, even as residents in communities such as Manotick and Vars push to have city water piped to their villages.
The clear trend, however, is to greater concern across Ontario about water for the three million residents who rely on wells.
Osgoode Councillor Doug Thompson said in a recent report to residents who are all on wells and septic systems that water in the rural area is a major concern, with 10 to 15 per cent of samples of well water showing some level of contamination.
Engineer Peter Stanton, president of Stanton Drilling in Pakenham, says that for homeowners, their experience with well water is largely a function of geology. He says most of the area has a good supply of water, but a few places, such as Dunrobin, have seen well problems for many years.
But concern about well water quality is bound to go up as the region continues to grow and the countryside sees more pavement. Shallow wells, for instance, are susceptible to contamination because of oil runoff or spills, and increased use of road salt.
If more rural communities do tap into city water service, and eventually sewer service, that will create a whole new set of questions, says Mr. Jellett, who is chairman of Ottawa agriculture and rural affairs committee. Rural settlements typically involved big lots to accommodate septic systems, but if city pipes are to serve those communities it only makes economic sense to increase the number of houses, which would mean redevelopment of those villages.
The alternatives are to go with mini-water and sewage systems dedicated to the villages, or to stick with wells and septic and not allow significant growth.
For the Newsons, however, a solution to their water problem cannot wait until Ottawa and its villages have talked through the possibilities. They have to get water somehow. So, even though they live close to the Ottawa River and live within a city that’s exporting its water to another municipality, the Newsons must now consider the extraordinary prospect of excavating for and installing a large water tank so they can turn on the tap.
It’s been a frustrating experience.
“I gave up crying a long time ago,” says Ms. Newson. “Three months is a long time to go without water.”
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008