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More Than 1,760 Boil-Water Advisories Reported in Effect Across Canada

Posted on: Monday, 7 April 2008, 21:00 CDT

By Colin Perkel, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - Eight years after the Walkerton water E. coli disaster, easy access to safe tap water remains elusive for tens of thousands of Canadians in communities across the country, leaving them at risk of water-borne poisoning, a new report finds.

In its May edition, the Canadian Medical Association Journal reports that 1,760 boil-water advisories are in effect in communities across the country - excluding those on 93 First Nations territories.

"If Walkerton wasn't enough to get our attention, what would it take?" Steve Hrudey, professor emeritus at the school of public health at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, said in an interview Monday.

"I'm not sure I've got a good answer to that. Do we need more of a wake-up call? Yet you look at the situation today and you're saying, 'Well, we've still got all these vulnerable systems out there.' "

Boil-water advisories are public-health warnings that tap or well water is unsafe to drink - sometimes even to bathe in - due to bacterial or other contamination.

The numbers, based on the latest information from provincial authorities, show most of the trouble spots are small, municipal water systems. Far-flung communities from Bay Roberts, N.L., and Victoria Beach, Man., to Tilley, Alta., and Sullivan Bay, B.C., have all experienced such orders, according to the report.

"We've got a horrendously large number of water purveyors out there and some of them have minimal resources," said Hrudey.

The worst-hit area is Ontario - home to the Walkerton E. coli tragedy that killed seven people and sickened 2,500 others in May 2000 - with 679 advisories in effect.

But British Columbia, with 530, is not far behind, and almost every other province, with the exception of Prince Edward Island, has advisories warning people that danger lurks in their taps.

"Advisories are intended to be a precautionary measure in the public-health tool kit, but given that some have been in place for at least five years, they are apparently being used as a Band-Aid substitute for treatment," the journal article states.

The findings underscore a potentially critical health concern that persists despite millions of dollars in government infrastructure spending, tighter laws surrounding drinking water, and higher fees for consumers.

One Health Canada estimate, based on American studies, is that contaminated water kills 90 Canadians and sickens another 90,000 every year, although environmentalists believe the figures are understated.

Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the Council of Canadians who has written extensively about water issues, called the number of boil-water advisories "stunning" and said it demonstrated the "perilous" state of Canada's drinking water.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates about $31 billion is needed to upgrade water and waste-water treatment infrastructure across the country, a tab communities cannot bear on their own.

Ontario Environment Minister John Gerretsen said the number of advisories in the province reflect the high standards in place since Walkerton and didn't necessarily indicate a serious health hazard in every case.

"If there's the slightest risk, we want the health unit to put the boil-water advisory in effect," Gerretsen said.

However, he said infrastructure upgrades are indeed required to bring the numbers down.

Federation president Gord Steeves said another part of the problem is the lack of national drinking-water quality regulations.

Hrudey disagreed that stricter laws are what's needed.

"Canadians have a bit of a blind spot. We have this mentality that we've got a big chunk of the world's fresh water and we ought to be able just put a pipe out and draw it in and we shouldn't have to pay anything for it," said Hrudey.

"There's a lot of misguided attitudes out there that percolate through the system."

Part of the solution, Hrudey said, might be to regionalize water systems, as Alberta and Australian states have done, to give smaller centres easier access to operational expertise.

Source: Canadian Press

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