Canada Lags US, Europe on Water Safety - Report
Date: 24-Nov-06
Country: CANADA
Author: Allan Dowd
Canada's voluntary national guidelines for water quality lag the regulatory systems used by the United States and Europe and fall short of World Health Organization recommendations, according to the David Suzuki Foundation.
"Although Canada is envied around the world for its natural wealth of fresh water, there is a disturbing gap between the quality of our water and the quality of our drinking water guidelines," the report said.
The group cited a 2001 government report that estimated contaminated water in Canada was linked to more than 90 deaths and 90,000 illnesses each year.
Health officials last week advised Vancouver residents to boil their water after heavy rain and wind storms dramatically increased the turbidity levels -- a measurement of silt -- in the area's mountain lake reservoirs.
Officials say the cloudy water makes it harder to destroy bacteria and other potential illness causing agents, although continual testing has found no dangerous substances in the water.
The report was prepared before Vancouver's water problems developed, but the Suzuki Foundation, which is based in the Pacific coast city, said the situation serves as a wake up call about potential dangers across the country.
Problems are particularly acute in Canada's often impoverished aboriginal reserves, with as many 75 percent of their drinking water systems suffering safety and water quality problems, the foundation said.
The environmental organization said Canada should replace its current system of voluntary guidelines with legally binding national standards that are on par with the rest of the industrialized world.
T. Duncan Ellison, director of the Canadian Water and Wasterwater Association, had not seen the Suzuki report but said that rules and regulatory strategies vary across Canada's 10 provinces and three territories.
"Some provinces are extremely prescriptive, even telling you what coloring to use on your written reports. Others are a lot less restrictive," Ellison said.
Rules for water treatment systems on native Indian reserves are set by the federal government.
Ellison said the association favors having regulators tell community water treatment systems what standards to meet, but letting local operators decide how to meet them. That was because the risks to water supplies vary from community to community.
While Vancouver's boil-water advisory is one of the largest in Canadian history, the Suzuki Foundation acknowledged it was mainly a nuisance rather than a health problem.
Seven people died and 65 were hospitalized because of contamination of Walkerton, Ontario's water system in 2000, and officials briefly evacuated the remote Indian reserve of Kashechewan, Ontario, over water safety concerns this year.
