Water safety mismanagement could mean another Walkerton
Studying a tragedy to death won’t safeguard our drinking water, nor save lives, without political will.

thestar.com
May 15, 2016
By Martin Regg Cohn

Sixteen years ago this month, water contamination at Walkerton left seven people dead and nearly 2,400 residents - half the town - seriously ill. As that disaster fades from memory, the latest news of high lead levels across the border in Flint, Mich., reminds us of the price we pay for aging pipes and water-borne perils.

Both communities were afflicted by the twin diseases of citizen complacency and political indifference.

We learned the lessons of Walkerton long ago - creating high-level inquiries, expert panels and legislative committees designed to prevent history from repeating itself. Not to mention annual reports by the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario.

But studying a tragedy to death won’t safeguard our drinking water, nor save lives, without the political will required to create a sustainable water system.

Post-Walkerton, the historical record shows an astonishing lack of follow-up. While we have raised the bar on water quality, many communities across the province still haven’t taken the required steps to shore up our collective water treatment infrastructure - or the financial architecture that underpins it.

Both are out of sight and out of mind: The pipes are buried below ground; and the higher cash flow needed for a reliable flow of water is a hard sell in our anti-tax culture, which punishes politicians who dare to raise rates.

Consider the consumer resistance to rising hydro rates - most of which is paying down a vast infrastructure deficit accumulated in the 1990s that yielded brownouts and breakdowns. Given the political grief over electricity prices, little wonder governments take the path of least resistance over water.

The perennial problem is that water delivery is treated mostly as an engineering issue, rather than an economic challenge, according to two new reports being released this week to mark the Walkerton anniversary. Authored by former deputy minister Michael Fenn and Trent University economist Harry Kitchen, their 110-page study, “Bringing Sustainability to Ontario’s Water System,” argues that fundamental reform continues to elude us.

A companion white paper on water infrastructure sustainability in Ontario recounts the political resistance and inertia of recent years. (Both documents were funded by the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Construction Association, which has a vested interest in spending more on water safety - though one could argue we all do.)

The latest reports remind us of a central recommendation of the first post-Walkerton inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O’Connor: The need for “full-cost accounting” that factors in the long-term cost of water transmission; and “full-cost recovery” to ensure that the rates charged accurately reflect the true costs incurred.

So far, we haven’t connected the dots.

Solemn laws were passed, one after another, but ultimately were ignored and sidelined. The Sustainable Water and Sewage Systems Act of 2002 received royal assent but was never implemented because of strong municipal opposition. Repealed in 2010, it was replaced by the Water Opportunities Act, which should be renamed the “missed opportunities and inaction bill,” given the lack of effective regulations and implementation all these years later.

Local and provincial authorities lacked the resolve to overhaul the way we calculate the true costs of water delivery, and raise the money to pay for it. After falling behind on capital investment by about $1 billion a year, the accumulated infrastructure deficit is now in the tens of billions of dollars. Today, with the federal Liberal government promising to allocate more money for capital projects, Queen’s Park has an opportunity to leverage its own infrastructure budget.

But securing capital investment will only pay for the pipes and the plants. Bringing a more rational approach to rates, by rationalizing the rate-setting bodies, is the other piece of the puzzle.

For example, average household charges for water in London are nearly double the costs in Toronto, Markham or Vaughan, the latest study shows. Ontario’s overall rates remain lower than in comparable jurisdictions.

For all the energy our governments have put into restructuring electricity transmission networks, it’s remarkable how little effort goes into modernizing water transmission. Securing our water supply, and guarding against potentially lethal outbreaks, requires constant vigilance, rather than waiting for an accident to happen.

“We have to get past the idea that providing safe drinking water should be cheap,” the white paper argues.

Why do people (and politicians) pay top dollar to sip brand name bottled water, yet purse their lips at the prospect of paying a penny more for clean tap water? It’s a conundrum that comes at a cost to human health.