BY KEITH LACEY

A dispute involving 14 homeowners in Skead, the quiet hamlet located near Sudbury Airport, and the city has provided the impetus for Greater Sudbury becoming a leader in ensuring safe drinking water for small towns across the province.

In early June, the Ministry of Environment ordered a tiny water treatment plant that has provided drinking water to 14 homeowners in Skead for the past 15 years to be upgraded to meet tougher provincial standards.

In an attempt to find affordable solutions, the ministry then agreed to allow the city’s water and wastewater department to experiment with portable units that use ultraviolet lights to purify water in individual homes. These portable units take water from the treatment plant and apply ultraviolet (UV) light that removes impurities and produces drinking water that meets provincial standards.

Portable units using UV lights to purify water have been used by cottage, hunting camp and lodge owners for years, but this is the first time any Ontario municipality has considered using them for private homeowners.

Test results so far have been very encouraging, said Nick Benkovich, the city’s director of water and wastewater services.

If these portable units work well, they could provide the blueprint for other towns and villages faced with trying to keep costs down while meeting drinking water standards put in place since the Walkerton water disaster six years ago.

“Since we’re one of the first municipalities being ordered to upgrade one of these systems...we could be providing solutions other municipalities look towards,” said Benkovich.

“Depending on the water source, these ultraviolet, point of entry systems, just might be the affordable solution to ensuring safe drinking water for people hooked up to non-residential systems or communal wells all across Ontario.”
Benkovich says his staff are encouraged with the early results.

“The potential ramifications of this project are quite large,” he said. “There might be 50 neighbourhood groups like this hooked up to wells or small systems in Greater Sudbury alone.

“These ultraviolet systems show great promise.”

Benkovich will file a report for the ministry detailing progress by the end of the month.

Ward 4 Councillor Russ Thompson, who represents constituents in Skead, said, “What’s going on in Skead could be precedent-setting across the province.”

After Skead’s volunteer certified water treatment operator Frank Kehoe resigned his position in May—he stepped down because the city insisted he and his neighbours who belong to Skead Heritage Homes share liability insurance costs—it’s been a hectic couple of months.

“I couldn’t face being held accountable if there was ever any serious problem,” said Kehoe.

Since no one else was certified to run the plant, Kehoe and his neighbours informed city staff they had no choice but to ask the city to operate it.

“Walkerton changed everything,” said Kehoe, who has volunteered as the treatment plant’s certified operator since 1991.

“There are thousands of people hooked up to these small systems and the province wants guaranteed water standards, but the small towns and municipalities don’t have the money.

“The city demands people in the small towns like us get liability insurance we just can’t afford. I really liked helping out running this water plant, but I was no longer willing to risk financial hardship and be held liable if something really bad happened.”

Within one month of Kehoe resigning, the ministry cited four system failures, including failure to regularly test water samples, chlorine residuals and proper water inspection.

“The ministry...was of the opinion the identified deficiencies with the drinking water system, lack of a qualified operator and failure to comply with the order posed a significant health risk to the users of the system,” said a staff report, presented to city council last week.

“As the corporation was no longer taking responsibility for ensuring compliance...there could be no assurance users of the system were being provided with properly treated water.”

Thompson calls Kehoe heroic for his dedication in ensuring he and  neighbours would have clean drinking water for the past 15 years.

The ministry order was the first in Ontario demanding a municipality upgrade a rural water system, said Thompson.

The same staff report clearly suggests many more such orders will be coming. This will affect residents who rely on clean drinking water from private wells and rural treatment systems.

The homeowners in Skead were shocked with a staff recommendation for “full cost recovery” to pay for the upgrades.

Those upgrades would have cost each homeowner a minimum of $4,000 a year and likely much more over several successive years, which is simply unacceptable, said Thompson.

This would have been on top of regular property taxes and water and sewer bills.

When Nickel Belt MPP Shelley Martel found out staff were recommending full cost recovery, she wrote a letter to council.

After numerous meetings between the homeowners, city staff and ministry officials, there was never any suggestion of a full cost recovery option, said Martel.

“There is no way these homeowners can ever afford to pay the full costs involved with the maintenance of the sytem...never mind upgrades,” said her letter. “Previously, the homeowners paid $720 annually...to cover the costs of water supplies, testing, hydro. Applying costs of $40,000 or more to these individuals, on an annual basis, was just not realistic, and these costs would never be paid.”

City council unanimously voted against the staff recommendation and returned the matter to the wastewater department to come up with more affordable solutions.

Now everyone is hoping the portable ultraviolet light systems are the answer.

Throughout the summer, Benkovich and staff have been doing their homework and they like what they see so far.

“Options like this were not previously made available to municipalities,” said Benkovich. “These portable systems have shown great promise to be a much more economical way of allowing people hooked up to smaller water systems to ensure drinking water meets provincial standards.”

Units being tested range in price between $1,000 to $3,000, said Benkovich.

The portable units are not only affordable, but would also eliminate the need for a full-time certified operator to run the small plants or test source water in communal wells, said Benkovich.

Regular plant maintenance and upgrades would still be needed, but could be done by certified city staff, he said.

There are many trailer parks, hunting lodges and small communal systems across the country having great difficulty affording plant upgrades and municipalities will be ordered to step in and maintain systems, says the staff report.

Since Walkerton, Kehoe anticipated stringent upgrades to ensure safe water would be coming.

He hopes the ultraviolet light systems will provide a long-term solution, he said. If not, it’s going to cost municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade small wells and plants.