ENVIRONMENT: Dangers to drinking water

A local committee tracking pollution threats to drinking water will report its findings next month.

A coalition of eco-advocacy groups, however, is urging the committee to add air pollution to the list of dangers.

Niagara’s drinking water source protection committee, formed by the province in 2007, is under orders to “identify and evaluate any existing or potential threats to water quality around the six municipal water intakes in the Niagara region,” said committee chairman Mark Neufeld.

The risk assessment is the “science-based foundation” the committee and province will use to create a source water protection plan for Niagara, he said.

Potential sources of pollutants include road salt, industrial chemicals and waste, fuel, pesticides and fertilizer.

The committee is focused first on identifying “immediate threats” within a newly designated protection zone around each pipe that sucks raw water out of the Great Lakes.

Neufeld said “practical examples” could be fuel storage tanks, nearby industries that release chemicals or waste into the environment and overflowing municipal sewage pipes.

All of Niagara’s drinking water ultimately comes from Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, but the “intake protection zones” aren’t limited to the lakes.

Raw water treated in the Decew plant in Thorold is siphoned out of the Welland Canal, for example, while Niagara Falls pulls from the Niagara River.

A report published Thursday by Pollution Probe and the Canadian Environmental Law Association suggested the provincially mandated committees should be watching the air for health threats, too.

The groups crunched data from the federal government’s National Pollutant Release Inventory to show large-scale facilities in 2007 released millions of kilograms of toxic chemicals and other contaminants into the air in “source protection areas” designated across Ontario.

In the Niagara area, about 95 large industries released more than 336,000 kilograms of toxic chemicals to the air in 2007, as well as 2.7 million kilograms of contaminants that contribute to smog, like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, according to the report.

“The old saying ‘what goes into the air, comes out in the water’ turns out to be true for the Great Lakes,” the coalition said in its report.

“If the efforts to protect the Great Lakes as an important source for drinking water are to be effective … we need to realign Ontario’s drinking water source protection program to include air releases.”

Local source water protection committees across the province report to the Ministry of the Environment.

Ministry spokeswoman Kate Jordan said it’s largely up to each committee to determine what constitutes a threat to source water in its area.

Jordan said committees would be expected to examine pollution from nearby facilities that submit data to the National Pollutant Release Inventory, and air emissions wouldn’t necessarily be excluded from the study.

But Jordan added “the majority of NPRI sites are a considerable distance” from designated source protection zones.

Jordan said the province is trying to address such emissions through its new Toxics Reduction Act, which requires industries of a certain size to develop toxic substance reduction plans beginning this year.

Neufeld read the advocacy group report for the first time Thursday and said it could yield “helpful information” for the committee.

But he said so far, general air pollution from industry “isn’t on the radar” as a major source water risk.

“This is our first swipe at source protection, so we’re focusing on what we feel are the major threats first,” he said.

Neufeld said a draft of the threat assessment should be released for public comment in about a month.