Drinking water in the post Walkerton era

By Hershel Guttman, P.Eng., R.V. Anderson Associates, Past OWWA Chair and AWWA Director and VP

We all know that the history of public water supply goes back well over 125 years in North America. Initially, public water supplies had two purposes. The first was for fire protection, especially in an era of wooden buildings in close proximity. The ability to protect a town or city from being destroyed emerged as not only an economic issue, but a social one.

Fires not only killed, they destroyed homes. This connection, therefore, with the public health of the community was fairly direct. An even more direct connection with a community's public health was the ability of water to reduce disease. This was because of its ready availability in the home for drinking, washing, cleaning, and cooking. The ability to easily use water for these purposes promotes sanitation and protects the public health.

Ironically, this also led to poor sanitation conditions outside the home, as sewage was allowed to be washed away in the streets. It was not until the work of Louis Pasteur in the 1880s, on the connection of bacteria with disease, that people began to understand that poor sanitation conditions and contaminated drinking water were vectors for disease. Cholera and typhoid fever epidemics became linked with unchecked pollution of drinking water sources, and the recycling of pathogenic bacteria via the drinking water supply.

The reaction of public officials was twofold: first to collect and redirect the sewage by building sewers; secondly, to make the drinking water safe by disinfecting it. The method of choice for disinfection was chlorination. In North America, this was first tried in 1908 in Chicago, and Toronto introduced it in 1919 in response to another typhoid epidemic.

In 1999, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, published their list of Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century. One of them was the "control of infectious diseases."

To quote, control of infectious diseases has resulted from clean water and improved sanitation. Infections such as typhoid and cholera transmitted by contaminated water, a major cause of illness and death early in the 20th century, have been reduced dramatically by improved sanitation.

And a major component of that has been the treatment of drinking water, not only with chlorine, but filtration and other means to protect the public health. It is worth noting as an aside, that these decisions were in the hands of engineers. In fact, the subject taught in the early part of the 20th century in engineering schools was called Public Health Engineering.

Now, as the last century progressed, we went beyond treating for dysentery, cholera, and typhoid fever. We discovered other pathogens such as viruses and protozoa. Lately, drinking water professionals have been treating for such protozoans as Giardia lamblia, and the more recently recognized lethality of Cryptosporidium which caused the deaths in Milwaukee in the early 1990s.

And we continue to find and treat for newly discovered bacteria and strains, such as E.Coli O157:H7 and Campylobacter jejuni, which caused the recent illnesses in Walkerton.

The message here is clear: The public health of our communities depends on our drinking water. Which brings us to the point that water must be made safe. It is easy for all of us to take this for granted in our day-to-day jobs, but I do not think we should. I think we need to be vigilant, whether as providers of water or not, and here is why: Drinking water is different from all other home deliveries -- it has no substitute! Think about it:

• Gas is piped to your home, but can be replaced by oil or electricity.
• Telephone and cable are interchangeable and can be supplemented via mail and couriers.
• Newspapers also delivered to your door, can be replaced by radio and TV.
• Cable TV can be replaced by books and videos.
• Even electrical power can be replaced by oil and gas.

But only water has no substitute, it is essential for life. In fact, without it, there is no life. So we should never take it for granted. But if it represents life itself, it must be made safe to drink and that is exactly what the new Ontario Reg 459 was designed to do. It is a good start in securing public health.

I ask municipalities and public utilities: What more can you do to protect drinking water quality? What about cross-connections? Is this a boring subject, or recognition that this issue represents one of your major vulnerabilities? A water system without a comprehensive cross-contamination prevention program, complete with customer training and monitoring, is like shopping in a drug store for a headache tablet, and finding all the bottles open!

We should be listening to customers. An excellent example of this, is a recent visit I made to a northern Ontario city. It seems there was a standing water problem with lead in the courthouse water, but no problem with the running water samples. For most of us, given that the water supplier has no jurisdiction with the building's plumbing, it would have ended there. But this public official, recognizing that he nevertheless had a responsibility for public health, correctly pointed out that the issue for him was public education.

Pre-Walkerton, we had non-binding guidelines on drinking water quality. The level of public health protection, therefore, was ultimately a political decision. Public health engineers could recommend, but could not overrule their political masters.

Now a new Regulation and the Ontario Drinking Water Standards are binding. The question is no longer if, but how to meet a high level of public health protection and how is an engineering issue. So ironically, public health protection is now back in engineering hands where it began.

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