Trust the Tap

In 2000, the town of Walkerton suffered an E.coli breakout in their municipal drinking water resulting in the death of 7 people and 2300 people becoming very ill, many of which were left with chronic health issues such as liver damage. There were a multitude of factors that led to the tragedy, including; an improperly constructed well, a contaminated water source, inadequate training and education of public utilities staff, and insufficient reporting requirements to the Ministry of the Environment.

As a result of the tragedy, an independent Commission known as the Walkerton Inquiry was set up to examine the contamination of the water supply in Walkerton, Ontario, and to look into the future safety of the water supply in Ontario. A few of the key recommendations from the inquiry include:

• Plans to protect sources of drinking water should be developed on watershed level, should be approved and reviewed by the Ministry of the Environment, but be prepared by local committees with local consultation and be managed by conservation authorities.
• All water should be continuously monitored, with alarms and automatic shut-off systems if something goes wrong.
• Training courses for all water systems operators should be required and accessible.

Successes of Multi-barrier Approach

• Since water quality test reporting began in 2004, more than 99.9% of the over 522,000 municipal drinking water system water quality tests continue to meet Ontario’s water quality standards.
• Ontario’s actions received an "A" ranking — the highest in Canada — in Ecojustice's Canada’s Drinking Water Report Card.
• There are 19 multi-stakeholder source protection committees across the province representing business, public, municipal and indigenous interests. These committees have developed 38 local source protection plans that identify actions to protect sources of municipal residential drinking water systems.
• The 38 source protection plans contain more than 12,500 policies to protect sources of municipal drinking water in Ontario for:
  • Over 900 groundwater wells
  • Over 70 Great Lakes intakes
  • Over 60 inland lake intakes
  • 13 Lake St. Clair and St. Lawrence River intakes.
• There are 22 prescribed drinking water threats being managed / removed from the landscape through source water protection. The list can be found here
• Over 1000 risk management plans have been established to manage drinking water threats on the landscape.
• 99.5% of 659 municipal residential drinking water systems received an inspection rating indicating over 80% compliance with Ontario’s regulations. 72% of systems received a perfect 100% rating.
• Over 5000 septic systems have been inspected for deficiencies
• As of March 31, 2019, there were 7,272 certified drinking water operators in Ontario who held a total of 10,040 certificates. This works out to a 22% increase over the last 10 years.
• Over 900 road signs have been installed on highways and major roads to identify the vulnerable areas around municipal drinking water systems.