WALKERTON TRAGEDY ... 25 YEARS LATER
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
In May 2000, contamination of municipal water by bacterial pathogens in Walkerton, Ontario, resulted in one of the world's largest outbreaks of Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7 disease.
Sources: CBC, Science Direct,The Narwhal, The Pointer
This was the worst public health disaster involving municipal water in Canadian history. At least seven people died and 2300 others became ill. A public inquiry was called to make findings and recommendations to ensure the safety of Ontario's water supply. Judge Dennis O’Connor detailed the events and causes that led to the outbreak.1 As with many public health disasters of catastrophic proportion, multiple unfortunate events occurred that resulted in the disaster.
While the role played by Walkerton’s public utilities commission (PUC) operators was one of the major factors, many of the deficiencies identified in the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) operations resulted from budgetary reductions. In 1996, government laboratories stopped testing municipal water samples and there were no criteria to govern the quality of testing or provisions made for notification of results. Government budget reductions resulted in laboratory privatization and in budget reductions to the MOE approvals and inspections program. The ministry lost more than 750 employees (over 30%). Enforcement was made difficult given that the regulatory responsibilities were governed by guidelines as opposed to legally binding regulations.
View detailed timeline of the Walkerton crisis in this May 10, 2010 CBC article
View Science Direct full article
The aftermath – the good, the bad and Bill 5
One of the more felicitous outcomes of the Walkerton crisis was the enactment of the 2006 "Clean Water Act" to protect the sources of municipal drinking water, such as lakes, rivers, and wells, through a "multi-barrier approach". It requires local source protection committees to develop watershed-based plans to identify and address risks to water quality and quantity before the water is treated. This legislation complemented the 2002 Safe Drinking Water Act - which focuses on the overall provision of safe drinking water - whose rules are enforceable.
This Watertoday article details a recent conviction for Timmins, Ontario under the SDWA Act.
But more worrisome developments lurk under the Ford administration.
The Doug Ford government wants to give itself the power to dictate more of the rules around how Ontario protects its drinking water. Bill 5 — dubbed the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act — was introduced at Queen’s Park on April 17 and easily passed its first reading with Ford claiming the legislative changes were necessary to cut “red tape” and “unlock our critical minerals and unleash our economy to create new jobs and opportunities in the north and across the province.”
The Ministry of Red Tape Reduction said the process in place to change the rules around drinking water is “overly complex and slow.” It said reforming that process will support housing construction and development, while keeping water safeguards in place.
Bill 5 has spurred widespread concerns among environmental and endangered species experts and.
One expert said the move will take away power from local committees tasked with protecting their region’s water supply, centralizing it in the hands of the government.
If the government wants to beef up some local water protections, some tweaks to the process could be useful, according to Theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. But without more details from the government clarifying how it will use its new powers, she added, it could also open the door to weaker public health protections down the road.
That’s a particularly ominous thought for some, coming 25 years after the Walkerton tragedy, which killed seven people and caused 2,300 more to become seriously ill, when the water supply in the town on the east side of Lake Huron became contaminated with E. coli from cattle manure.
Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner said the changes amount to “reducing the power of independent, evidence-based experts and transferring that authority to the minister.”
“It certainly weakens the protections that were put in place out of the lessons learned from Walkerton,” he said in an interview. That includes the need for overlapping layers of protection.
See The Narwhal full article here
According to an article published on May 9 in The Pointer Premier Doug Ford and his PC government have launched an unprecedented assault on environmental protection law in this province.
Bill 5 — dubbed the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act — was introduced at Queen’s Park on April 17 and easily passed its first reading with Ford claiming the legislative changes were necessary in order to cut “red tape” and “unlock our critical minerals and unleash our economy to create new jobs and opportunities in the north and across the province.”
Opponents however argue the environmental protections put in place by previous governments are not a form of "regulatory burden" or "red tape" – the kind of excessive government oversight and redundancy some argue hamstrings private businesses from creating jobs.
"Redundancy was an essential lesson of the Walkerton inquiry, that we need to have in place safeguards so that if something goes wrong at one level, you can catch it at the next level," said Theresa McClenaghan, the executive director and counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Assocation, or CELA.
"You're not only protecting the source of drinking water, but you’re also protecting the distribution system, through the pipes and then what's coming out of people's taps at the end of the day."
CELA was one of the many agencies at the inquiry that fought for and won what's called multi-barrier source water protection. The philosophy relies on regular monitoring of water quality, strong laws and standards and encourages public participation to protect water from source to tap.
Former senior Ontario planner and architect of the Greenbelt Plan, Victor Doyle, says the idea that the environment must be sacrificed at the expense of economic growth is outdated thinking that does not align with economic realities.
“That’s certainly old school thinking and proven to be not only completely wrong, but in conflict because the best economic outcomes are clearly where you manage the environmental externalities and the economics associated with those.”
Katie Krelove, the Ontario Campaigner for Wilderness Committe, labelled it as an “anti-democratic attack on environmental protection” while Margaret Prophet, the executive director the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition, said it is a “fire sale of our freedoms”.
“With a single stroke of the premier and cabinet’s pen, any neighbourhood could be branded a “special zone” where clean-water protections, endangered species protections, local bylaws — even Indigenous treaty rights — could simply vanish. That’s not prosperity; that’s steam rolling community rights,” Prophet lamented.
The Ring of Fire a mineral-rich region 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay could be designated a “special economic zone” under the legislation. It not only contains valuable mineral deposits but is also home to many low-lying swamp ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon in their waterlogged soils and peat layers which play a critical role in climate regulation
Officials from CUPE Local 966, the union representing Peel’s water and wastewater treatment workers, said they’re concerned the province is considering putting the regionally controlled service into private hands, a move they say could lower quality of the service and result in job cuts.
The union’s privatization concerns follow a report by Queen’s Park news site, The Trillium, that indicated Peel’s transition board is recommending that the region’s water and wastewater infrastructure be moved to a provincially-regulated utility.
View full The Pointer article here
