By Steve Hubrecht
A recent information meeting held by the Canal Flats Water Protection and Advisory Committee drew a large crowd.
Major upgrades to the water system, including a new treatment plant, are looming in the future. The village set up a committee of Canal Flats volunteers several months ago to help guide council and village staff through this process.
During the meeting committee members explained their role and the options facing the village. A number of residents were upset about the possibility of an expensive treatment plant, but as water committee members explained several times, there doesn’t seem to be much choice since the provincial government is mandating the upgrades.
“It (the provincial government) has given the directive that we need to put in a water treatment plant,” said committee chair Gayle Lake. “I can’t sit back and tell Interior Health they’re wrong.”
An audience member asked, “So we really don’t have a choice, right? Whether we express our opinions, really we don’t.”
Lake said that is correct, adding it’s mandated by Interior Health, which is concerned about the potential for contamination.
“It’s just a shame. I’ve lived here 62 years with this nice fresh water. There was germs in it, you bet. There’s going to be. (But) why chlorinate it?” the audience member asked.
Lake said it wasn’t yet 100 per cent clear that the water treatment plant would involve chlorination, as there it could be other methods such as ultraviolet (UV) treatment or filtration.
The resident suggested that chlorination was the most likely of those methods since it is the least expensive.
Lake said that might not necessarily be the case since chlorination must be done continually. Exactly which option would be cheapest for Canal Flats would depend on a range of factors, said Lake.
Committee member and groundwater scientist Araleigh Alexander said those who feel strongly can talk with their local MLA, who could then try to get the provincial government to change its mind. But there’s nothing the committee can do and even at the municipal (Village of Canal Flats) level, “there’s not much they can do about it because the B.C. government can take away the water licences for our wells if they’re not safe,” said Alexander.
Another resident said, “Forty years ago it was safe (the water) and we used to have the mill over here that we had all sorts of spills on. We used to put PCBs down on the roads. There were thousands of gallons of diesel and gas going through. We used to take (water) samples then and they were fine. What changed? I’d like to know what changed. Did the provincial government change something, or what happened?”
Water committee member and Interior Health environmental officer Jennifer Beverly replied that the B.C. government did indeed change something — in 2011 it introduced new guidelines on containing pathogens and the associated risks.
Earlier in the meeting a Canal Flats resident had addressed the committee, noting “there’s a rumour going around that you’re already chlorinating our water. Is there any truth to that?”
“There is no truth to that. We are not chlorinating the water,” answered Lake.
She explained that the committee is only gathering information, creating a report and presenting ideas. “We are not making any decision,” she said. “(Canal Flats) council will make decisions.”
Alexander then outlined some of the details of the Canal Flats aquifer, which basically underlies the entire village, stretching from the Kootenay River north to Columbia Lake, and from Highway 93/95 west to the hills above the old mill. She noted that some geologists call it “a geographic wonder” since the two bodies of water — Kootenay River and Columbia Lake — come so close to connecting “but don’t quite connect (on the surface). They only connect under the ground through the Canal Flats aquifer.”
An estimated one million cubic metres of water flow though the Canal Flats aquifer every day — a huge volume considering the average Canadian uses 0.2 cubic metres of water per day, explained Alexander.
That aquifer is a mix of sand and gravel, which is really porous, with water flowing through it quickly. That accounts for its high volume. But “the same things that make our aquifer really productive also make it really vulnerable,” said Alexander, adding that sand and gravel “make a good filter, but only if the water is moving through there for a long time.”
Ideally, water should be moving through sand and gravel for 200 to 300 days to get rid of bacterial contamination, and the village’s wells are close enough to the Kootenay River that they are “just on the edge” of that 300-day filtration threshold, said Alexander.
Additionally “the stuff we throw on the ground (in the village) . . . goes down to the water table very quickly because the water table’s very shallow,” she said, adding that includes waste water, leaks from septic fields, oil spilled when changing car oil, and more.
Both Alexander and Lake repeatedly pointed to the Canal Flats Groundwater At Risk of Pathogens (GARP) report, which was completed last May. The report can be found online at canalflats.civicweb.net/document/33068/.
Aside from the risk of contamination and a new treatment plant, there are other major water issues facing the village.
Lake explained that perhaps the biggest is that the “majority of our current fire hydrants do not support the B.C. fire flow requirements. It’s a volume problem. Not because we don’t have a lot of water, but because we have aging infrastructure and we have pipes that are just too small . . . it could be catastrophic if we have a fire hydrant that is not working where your house is located and we’re trying to put a fire out.”
That aging infrastructure includes pipes that are only four inches in diameter in some parts of the village, and pipes that are only six inches in diameter in some other parts, said Lake, pointing out that “the legal requirement right now is 10 inches.”
Lake noted that Canal Flats water quality is fine in tests, but if there’s some kind of accident or contamination, even if there’s just a small chance of such an accident or contamination happening, Canal Flats water might not be safe without a water treatment plant.
“I don’t want anyone to get so sick like they did in Walkerton, Ontario. About 2,000 people were sick, seven died. People are still living with liver problems. And that was because they thought their water was great, had never had problems before,” she said.
But the new treatment plant and the pipes and fire hydrant upgrades could be very expensive, conceded Lake. She noted another small town in B.C. recently built a new water treatment plant that was supposed to cost $54 million, yet the bill quickly rose to $87 million.
Lake said she couldn’t be sure, but guessed the village simply doesn’t have enough money to pay for a project of that scope without raising taxes to crazy levels.
“We have to figure out how else we can bring dollars into the town,” said Lake. She floated the idea of selling water to an entrepreneur who would bottle it. The village already sells some of its water to BC Hydro, at a rate of $30 for 1,000 gallons, she noted. “We’ve got water that is going under us and by us (in the aquifer). I’m not sure why we’re not selling it. I can go to the store and buy Langdon, Alberta water. I’m not sure why we’re not bottling it (Canal Flats water),” she said.
Murmurs broke out among the audience, and Lake hastened to add “that doesn’t mean we’re going to sell all of it.” She pointed out that the village could put restrictions on just how much water could be bottled for private sale, with the rest kept for use by residents.
“I see people in the audience shaking their heads, saying I’m crazy,” she said, but wondered again how the village could raise the money for the new water treatment plant it is being mandated to build without raising taxes.
The water committee meeting was filmed and posted online by resident Tricia Pounder MacDonald.
The next water committee public meeting will be held Monday, March 17 at the Canal Flats Civic Centre at 6 p.m.
