[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
DAM-L Canada - [Water] Crisis is National ..experts say (fwd)
Subject: CANADA: G&M: "Crisis is national, water experts say"
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 11:47:31 -0500
fwd from...
Right to Water (right-to-water@iatp.org) Posted: 05/06/2001 By jeaton@fox.nstn.ca
============================================================
In British Columbia, the province is involved in a huge lawsuit
over its effort to prevent a company from making bulk water
exports.
Environmentalists are fearful that Ontario's recent decision to
grant Swiss-based mining company OMYA Corp. the right to take
about 1.6 billion litres a year from the Tay River near Perth,
and mix it with the minerals it processes, could lead to
potential trade claims on the province's water.
fyi- janet
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/B/2001
0506/wnatwater0406?tf=RT/fullstory.html&cf=RT/config-neutral&vg=BigAdV
ariableGenerator&slug=wnatwater0406&date=20010506&archive=RTGAM&site=F
ront
------------------------------------------------
POSTED AT 8:07 AM EDT Sunday, May 06
Crisis is national, water experts say
By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail, front page
Canada needs to undertake a national review of all aspects of its
water resources in response to the country's second major water-safety
crisis in less than a year, say many politicians, municipal leaders
and environmentalists.
The calls are being made after a cryptosporidium outbreak this week in
North Battleford, Sask., was linked to three deaths, bringing to 10 the
number of Canadians who may have died in the past year because they
made what is turning out be a fatal mistake in Canada - drinking their
tap water.
But the deaths, highly visible and dramatic, are the tip of the
iceberg when it comes to Canada's water woes, according to many
experts. Everything from the possibility that dangerous microbes are
entering water supplies to the crumbling state of municipal water
works requires a thorough examination.
"There is a dramatic need for a new federal water policy," said Paul
Muldoon, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Defence
Fund and one of the country's top water experts. "We need a national
review of water policy, both on its quantity and quality, including
the issue of money and how to rebuild the national water
infrastructure."
The call is being echoed by others, who are united in a concern that
Canada, which possesses nearly 10 per cent of the world's renewable
freshwater, is squandering this valuable resource.
Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein, who has introduced a bill to have
federal regulation of drinking water, much like current oversight of
drug safety, says people are losing confidence in the ability of
provinces and municipalities to manage this resource.
"We won't really know the real scope of the problem, which I believe
is greater than 700 communities," Mr. Grafstein said in an interview
in his Toronto law office yesterday. "The problem is, nobody knows."
In the Commons, New Democrat MP Lorne Nystrom demanded the Liberal
government introduce a new law that would create national water
standards, but he was given few answers. Currently, the country has
voluntary, and non-binding, federal water-safety guidelines.
Ottawa introduced a bill on water standards in 1997, but it was never
passed.
Transport Minister David Collenette, sitting in for an absent David
Anderson, the Environment Minister, said the issue was a priority,
but dodged the question about national standards.
"The government believes that the improvement of our drinking-water
supply and sewage treatment is an utmost priority," he said.
But the pressure for some kind of national action is growing.
The Sierra Legal Defence Fund released a study in January that said
problems such as the one in Saskatchewan were inevitable, given the
country's weak water regulations.
Randy Christensen, a lawyer who co-wrote the study, is pressing for a
formal investigation of the country's water resources.
"There is a need to take a more holistic look at the way we manage
water in Canada to ensure that it is safe for people to drink and
that there is enough available to meet environmental needs," Mr.
Christensen said.
An array of dramatic problems in recent years has made water a big
political issue in almost all areas of the country.
Last year, a water-poisoning outbreak similar to the one in
Saskatchewan killed seven people and made thousands seriously ill in
Walkerton, Ont., in one of the world's worst E. coli outbreaks. The
epidemic has made the farming town a national symbol of environmental
contamination and damaged the image of Premier Mike Harris.
In Newfoundland, many drinking-water supplies are contaminated with
cancer-causing trihalomethanes, while the province's Premier, Roger
Grimes, is looking favourably on a controversial water-exporting
scheme from Gisborne Lake.
The state of water supplies on many native reserves is a national
disgrace, including one in northern Quebec where pets had to be given
bottled water because area sources were so contaminated.
Boil-water advisories - a sign of water contamination - are common
across the country.
In Ontario, a dangerous industrial solvent, trichloroethylene, has
been detected in many municipal systems at levels that would cause
regulators in the United States to shut the water systems down. But
tens of thousands of residents in major communities, such as
Cambridge, are allowed to use the contaminant-laced water under the
lax provincial standards. The solvent has also been found in Quebec.
The amount of water available in Canada is also a concern. Some
experts worry that global warming may be shrinking the stock of water
in the Great Lakes, the mightiest freshwater ecosystem in the world,
while some Canadians in Alberta and Ontario have recently been found
trying to flog their spring water for profit over the Internet.
In Alberta, the government is so worried about scarce water supplies
that it is considering allowing residents who hold water licences to
buy and sell these extraction rights, permitting the kind of water
trading that is common in parched areas of the United States.
In British Columbia, the province is involved in a huge lawsuit over
its effort to prevent a company from making bulk water exports.
Environmentalists are fearful that Ontario's recent decision to grant
Swiss-based mining company OMYA Corp. the right to take about 1.6
billion litres a year from the Tay River near Perth, and mix it with
the minerals it processes, could lead to potential trade claims on
the province's water.
Municipal water systems across the country are also in trouble. Many
municipalities currently collect only enough from their customers to
pay the operating costs of their system. Little or nothing is being
set aside to fund the replacement of this infrastructure when it
wears out, to say nothing of the improvements that will be required to
bring treatment plants up to the standards needed to handle such new
threats as cryptosporidium.
Recently, the head of Toronto's water works predicted charges to
homeowners in many parts of the province would need to double or even
triple - to perhaps as much as $1,000 annually per home - to provide
the funds needed to maintain safe water and sewage systems.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities says that $16.5-billion
will be needed over the next decade to keep national water works
functioning. It is currently not clear where all of this money will
come from, as the federal government, and large provinces such as
Ontario, have stopped earmarking funds for water-treatment systems.
Those who have studied Canada's water situation say it is such a mess
that nothing short of a national water policy is needed to fix it
because there is such a hodgepodge of federal, provincial and
municipal responsibilities that no one is really in charge.
"It's a very sad affair that we can't better co-ordinate water, even
in our own province there isn't anyone responsible for water, I mean
you've got about seven different ministries on various aspects of
water," complained James MacLaren, who was a member of the last
federal inquiry into water in 1985.