Drinking water needs care, warns Walkerton survivor

By Mona Mattei

Most days citizens of a city don’t give a second thought to taking a drink of water from their taps. They trust that their city’s staff have done their jobs to ensure safe, quality water is there for everyone.

But what happens when something is not quite right? Last week Bruce Davidson, a local from Walkerton, Ontario, told an audience of 75 in Grand Forks just what it is like when something goes horribly wrong.

“We thought that contaminated water, much less illness and death from contaminated water, was something that happened exclusively in the impoverished areas of the earth,” said Davidson.

“What we realized in Walkerton is that bad water can happen anywhere if we take our eye off the ball. When I say we – provincial government, the municipal government and I include myself and every citizen in our community who did not give our water a second thought.”

Local residents concerned with watershed contamination sponsored this presentation last Wednesday, Mar. 14, supported by the environment committee of the City of Grand Forks, in hopes of highlighting just how important it is to manage water.

Al Grant, with the Boundary Environmental Alliance, opened the evening linking the potential for problems in watersheds across the region and how the Walkerton example might be one to learn from to protect our communities.

Remember Walkerton? In 2000 this small town, just about the size of Grand Forks, experienced the devastating effects of an outbreak of e-coli in their water system. Davidson, co-founder of the Concerned Walkerton Citizens, lived through the tragedy and continued to be a part of the town’s journey recovering from the deadly water to investigation, corrections and the consequences of the problem.

The starting point for the outbreak was a well located close to agricultural lands. A breach in the well system, heightened by a 100 year rain event, triggered the contamination which, as a result of poor system management, spread like wildfire throughout the town.

“We need to remember that what tipped the scale for us from having chronically contaminated water to deadly water was the activity of that 100 year rain event,” concluded Davidson.

“A little girl drank one glass of water (while visiting in town). That glass of water had no tell-tale signs to human senses that anything was wrong. She got progressively sicker and sadly died in her mother’s arms 10 days later.”

What started out as flu-like symptoms wracked havoc for the citizens of the town. Davidson painted the picture of the Walkerton disaster as it unfolded from the start of illnesses to a full blown, community wide emergency. At its height the streets of Walkerton were deserted, the hospital was over flowing, and the sound of helicopters lifting patients to higher level care facilities was a regular occurrence.

Davidson was eloquent in describing the emotional pain experienced by families, extreme illnesses, and their agony as the illness progressed for friends and loved ones. He told moving stories of continued illness to this day for Walkerton residents, and of their losses of not only family, but also of dignity.

“We talk about punishment, we talk about what kind of sentences came out of Walkerton. Well, the people who got the life sentences are the victims of the water,” Davidson said.

But Davidson and other citizens did not accept what had happened and pushed to ensure that the cause of the tragedy was discovered and changes implemented. The causes: systemic breakdown at the municipal and provincial levels where failsafes were not in place to ensure water safety; the breach in the well; and a failure to follow the initial rezoning recommendation for the well location.

“What we’re hoping to do around every municipal well, or great lake or river intake around Ontario is create a system where we have a consensus about what needs to be done to protect the water. What I recommend is…that source protection, which basically means start with clean water and keep it clean, is the most efficient … for protecting our drinking water.”

As a result of the public inquiry, the new policies they developed for water protection are a blueprint for water security being used around the world, explained Davidson.

What was the cost of getting it wrong? Aside from the obvious loss of seven people’s lives, Davidson said with the treatment of ongoing post-traumatic stress, the loss of businesses, the municipality’s insurance tripling, the estimate is that the cost of the tragedy was over $200 million.

Some solutions that Davidson said are part of Walkerton’s process now include: ensuring abandoned wells are closed; fencing water courses from livestock; vegetative buffer zones; tree planting; regular soil analysis in agricultural areas and nutrient management plans amongst other policies.

Have Canadians learned from this disaster? Davidson offered examples of over 60 water problems since 2000 that should not have happened.

 “We hope that all those that visit the (contaminated wellhead) site are going to reflect on the multiple causes of the tragedy and really be filled with a new reverence for the care and management of the water that sustains us all,” Davidson added. “What’s your house worth? What’s your community worth? It will become a ghost town if that were ever to come pass. Work together to be sure that lethal drinking water is not…a challenge.”