August 7, 2024
The Honourable Doug Ford
Premier of Ontario Legislative Building, Queen’s Park
Toronto, ON M7A 1A1 Sent via email: premier@ontario.ca
Dear Premier Ford,
Safe and reliable access to water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking or recreational purposes. Protecting water at its source has been an important strategy in Ontario’s approach to delivering safe drinking water.
The legacy of events from May 2000 in Walkerton, Ontario, during which 270 individuals were impacted by gastrointestinal illness, resulted in improvements to the regulatory framework for drinking water protection, although full implementation of the formal inquiry recommendations is yet to be achieved.
After reviewing the Ontario Auditor General’s 2023 Annual Report , which indicates that Public Health Ontario is proposing the phasing-out of free provincial water testing services for private drinking water, the Windsor and Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) Board of Health is joining both local and provincial partners in a request for the Province to reject this proposal in order to reduce the risk of waterborne diseases in our communities.
Within the WECHU region, the majority of residents using private drinking water systems reside on Pelee Island. The remote community of Pelee Island, accessible only by air or water, currently has approximately 300 residences, and most of these homes connect to a private well or utilize drinking water from the lake. Few homes are connected to regulated small drinking water systems, or to the municipal drinking water system which is routinely monitored and regulated for drinking water sampling and testing parameters. A small number of residents within Essex Couty, not on Pelee Island, are also serviced by private drinking water sources.
By phasing out free private drinking water testing, we create new and re-enforce existing barriers for system owners. As an example, a Pelee Island resident with existing sample transportation challenges due to geographic location (i.e. samples must be transported from the island via air or boat as the first step of the process), will now have an additional cost burden negatively affecting the system owner’s ability and willingness to support recommended sampling frequencies provided as a result of a public health risk assessment (outlined in the Safe Drinking Water and Fluoride Monitoring Protocol, 2023).
Gastrointestinal illness is severely underreported, and free private drinking water testing offers an opportunity to provide important information to private drinking water system owners on maintenance and soundness of private wells, treatment, and to reinforce education about the importance of routine well water testing. Without the availability of barrier free testing from Public Health Labs, health inequities will be created to our communities.
In the interest of public health and illness prevention, the WECHU Board of Health supports municipalities in Ontario, like the Township of Pelee, in a call for the Province of Ontario to reconsider and ultimately decide against the proposed phasing out of free private drinking water testing services.
WECHU BOH Chair
Cc: Ontario Ministry of Health
Public Health Ontario