Drinking Water Operator fined $6,400 for Safe Drinking Water Act Violation

News.ontario.ca
May 17, 2021

Convicted -- Massimo Barillari

Court Location -- Newmarket

Description of Offence -- The conviction relates to providing false or misleading information in any document required to be created, stored or submitted under this Act, namely a Chain of Custody form, contrary to section 138(2) of the Safe Drinking Water Act thereby committing an offence under section 140(1) of that Act.

Date of Offence -- On or about July 9, 2018

Date of Conviction -- April 16, 2021

Penalty Imposed -- Massimo Barillari pleaded guilty and was convicted of one violation under the Safe Drinking Water Act and was fined $6,400 plus a victim fine surcharge of $1,600 with 6 months to pay.

Background --

• At the time of the alleged violations between June and July 2018, Mr. Barillari was employed at the City of Vaughan municipal residential drinking water system as a class 1 drinking water operator and an operator-in-training for wastewater treatment.
• As part of Mr. Barillari’s duties, he was responsible for taking drinking water samples from locations provided to him on a Chain of Custody form.
• During this period, the City of Vaughan carried out an internal audit of work conducted by the Environmental Services Division, including the work of the Drinking Water Operators.
• Owners of a drinking water systems are required to maintain Chain of Custody forms under Ontario Regulation 170/03 of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
• The City of Vaughan Standard Operating Procedures for Water Sampling for Laboratory Sampling stipulates that Drinking Water Operators must take both a Free Chlorine reading and a Total Chlorine reading in order to obtain a Combined Chlorine concentration. Drinking Water Operators must also take a microbiological sample to be analyzed at a licensed laboratory.
• On July 9, 2018, Mr. Barillari was selected for internal audit by the City of Vaughan. Auditors observed that Mr. Barillari went to five locations to take drinking water samples and he recorded chlorine results of drinking water samples for each location on the Chain of Custody Form. However, auditors observed that Mr. Barillari spent less than the required amount of time to properly use the testing equipment to test the water samples at three separate sites. They concluded it was not possible that Mr. Barillari performed the tasks he recorded in the Chain of Custody Forms.
• Furthermore, Mr. Barillari did not stop at one of the five locations but recorded a chlorine result for that location on the Chain of Custody form. When questioned, Mr. Barillari stated that he was unable to stop at the location due to construction and instead he went to the next location on his route, took two samples and recorded one as being from the skipped site.
• The ministry’s Environmental Investigations and Enforcement Branch investigated and laid charges which resulted in one conviction.