Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - January 2003
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The O’Connor Report will dramatically impact on water and wastewater operations

By Vincent Nazareth, P. Eng.,
R.V. Anderson Associates Limited

In general, Canadians have tended to take their drinking water supply and wastewater systems for granted. Most people do not know how, or where, the water comes from, nor do they care. The Walkerton Report, authored by Justice Dennis R. O’Connor, and released in May of 2002, contains 93 individual recommendations which will profoundly affect both water and wastewater disciplines. In his Report he directs us to take a big picture look at our drinking water systems. The safety, sustainability and reliability of our drinking water systems means controlling what we allow to enter our water sources to ensure the quality of what is delivered at the taps. Wastewater discharges, he emphasizes, are a major component of the total solution.

Although most of the 93 recommendations relate to the treatment and distribution of drinking water in Ontario, at least 40% of the recommendations relate directly or indirectly to wastewater facilities and their operation. There may be the assumption that in implementing these recommendations only water supply systems will be impacted. This is not the case. Justice O’Connor says in the middle of page 422: “I strongly favour a requirement that owners obtain a licence for each municipal water treatment system that they own. In order not to overcomplicate the matter, I recommend that initially licences be restricted to (water) treatment plants and distribution systems. The licence requirements should eventually be extended to wastewater treatment systems.” The report thus recognizes that while water treatment and distribution are the immediate priority, licencing of owners of wastewater treatment systems should follow.

Thus, for owners of wastewater systems, it would be prudent to expect that all recommendations that are applicable to waste-water, will eventually become legal requirements.

Source protection “Watersheds are an ecologically practical unit for managing water. This is the level at which impacts to water resources are integrated and individual impacts that might not be significant in and of themselves combine to create cumulative stresses that may become evident on a watershed level.” The first 17 of Justice O’Connor’s recommendations relate to source water protection, key to ensuring that we have safe drinking water now and in the future.

The recommendations focus on a watershed management approach that will force us to consider all activities in a given watershed, and their cumulative impact on the quality of the water resources in that watershed, be they ground or surface sources. Activities that will come under review would include: industrial discharges, agriculture - including use of fertilizers and manure, wastewater treatment plant discharges, stormwater discharges, and the spreading of biosolids. (In the case of biosolids, the Nutrient Management Act, currently under review, will have the greater impact on the re-use of biosolids).

The Report calls for all watersheds to have Source Water Protection Plans (SWPs) which are to be prepared through a consultative process involving all stakeholders and the public. Municipal Official Plans would have to be consistent with or have regard to SWPs and thus, land use planning within any watershed will be directly impacted by the source water protection plan.

The concept of assessing the cumulative effects of all activities that have a bearing on the protection of source waters, is not in itself a new one. What is new, is that now a global approach to protection of our water environment must include a cumulative effects assessment of all the intended uses of land and water resources within a given watershed. It is likely that as a result of cumulative effects analyses, discharge criteria for wastewater treatment plants could become more stringent, requiring increased removal of currently governed contaminants or the need to remove new substances of concern. This leads us to the next impact on wastewater operations: higher treatment standards, new technologies.

“Because sewage treatment plant standards and operations go beyond the mandate of this inquiry, I make only the following recommendation, recognizing that it should be seen in the context of a larger program of reform and upgrading.” - Justice O’Connor.

Section 6.5 Wastewater Treatment, Recommendation #32 states: “The Provincial Government should support major wastewater treatment plant operators in collaborative studies aimed at practical methods of reducing or removing heavy metals and priority organics (such as endocrine disruptors) that are not removed by conventional methods”.

Abridged

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