Tax Payer Water Quality

Do the people of Flint, Michigan, or countries not as fortunate as Canada have it worse than what I'm going to rant about? Yes, but I'm still going to do it.

I live in Nova Scotia, Canada, in a small town with a relatively high tax rate. We're a town of about 2500 and the property tax rate is at %2.05. Our amenities are trash collection, general town maintenence, a volunteer fire department, twice a week dedicated police presence, and a tiny library, you can also lump in the other things like business development etc that don't take up a huge budget in a town this small.

Included in "general town maintenence" is the day to day running of our water treatment plant. Every homeowner or tenant also pays a water bill of $10 per 1000 gallons plus a quarterly base charge dependent on the size of your water meter. Our water comes from our namesake river, which is red and muddy as it gets. For the most part, by the time it gets to the tap, it's clear as day. Thank you modern technology.

But, four to five times every year, for a few days ranging to 3 weeks at the longest, the water gets high in the river, and our treatment plant just can't keep up with the silt. The water is unusable for bathing, drinking, washing clothes.
Every year at town meetings, this is brought up. New treatment plants are proposed, but we are always told that no treatment method would work well enough to be worth the cost of the plant.

Last year, our town proposed a MILLION DOLLAR LIBRARY/TOWN HALL...for a town of 2500. Residents said, no way, get us a new treatment plant or lower our taxes instead. Nothing was done.

Now, our town council has been paid (in my opinion/allegedly) to pass a deal with a gas company to sell our river water to help them clean up salt deposits for a gas project. After the water does it's job, the super salinated water will be pumped back into our river, altering a habitat that houses many fish species and spawning grounds, which in turn feed a plethora of animals as well as locals.

The water is still going to come to our taps: HOW THE $&!@ ARE YOU GOING TO CLEAN IT, WHEN YOU CANT KEEP UP WITH A LITTLE EXTRA MUD?

Ahh bureaucracy at its finest! Sounds like you need to run for city council...

a reply to: Atsbhct

Sounds like you have a lot more investigative work to do.

Something isnt right (as you suspect - payment)

So, follow the money!

Make your findings public, but if you do, you should expect consequences.

I know what your talking about my friend. I live in a cummunitiy of about 4000 people (also we have very high taxes)and I happen to work at the local water treatment plant and we process river water aswell. Sadly the problem is unanimous when dealing with water sourced from rivers. The spring run off always increase turbidity in the water and in turn more silt gets into the plant.

This makes the raw water you start with a bit more difficult to treat in that not only is it more dirty it also gets warmer which changed how your treatment chemicals react almost on a daily basis until the river stabilizes again. Sometimes the increase in turbidity from the annual average is several thousand times average turbidity!

Usually this can be dealt with by the plant operators by close monitoring of the clarifier(s) aswell as extra filter back washes as long as the water can be spared. At my plant we also dose potassium permanganate which is a heavy duty water oxidizer which really helps odour and clarity issues at these times.

It's hard to say exactly whats wrong with your plant what exactly is unusable about the water? is it discoloured or too odorous? Does it have to low of chlorine residual when in reaches the homes to be considered safe to drink? What is the raw waters turbidity to start with? If it's too high coming from the river it doesn't matter if you get a new treatment plant you might need a new water source. Do other towns that also use this river as source water have the same problems?


Hopfully that salty water is added back to the river down stream of you folks!

a reply to: Atsbhct