COMMUNITY SERVICES AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE
	TO:	Mayor and Members of Council
	FROM:	Stan Bertoia, General Manager of Construction and Utilities
	PREPARED BY:	Jerry Klaus, General Manager of Waterworks
	DATE OF MEETING:	2004-September-13
	SUBJECT:	Second Water Quality Quarterly Report for 2004

RECOMMENDATION:

That the Second Water Quality Quarterly Report (Attachment “A”) be received.

PURPOSE:

To report on the Second Water Quality Quarterly Report as requested by Council on the results of water sampling and testing for the period April 1, 2004 to June 30, 2004.

BACKGROUND:

Ontario’s Drinking Water Systems Regulation (O.Reg.170/03) requires all drinking system owners to collect and test a minimum prescribed number of representative water quality samples. For Markham, the minimum quarterly number of samples is 1463.

WATER SAMPLING AND TESTING SUMMARY:

During the period April 1, 2004 to June 30, 2004, the total number of water samples collected and tested by Waterworks operators and sent to the York-Durham Regional Environmental Laboratory (YDREL) for analysis was 2116. The higher number of samples than the minimum samples over the regulatory requirement is needed to satisfy the system’s needs and for quality assurance.

Overall, only 1 sample did not meet the Ontario’s Drinking Water Systems Regulation (O.Reg. 170/03) required parameters. The failed sample exceeded the limit for Heterotrophic Plate Count (HPC) after 48 hours. Upon being notified by YDREL, Waterworks operators flushed the affected parts of the water distribution system, took 6 re-samples, and recorded the combined chlorine residual levels. These re-samples were collected at each of the adverse, upstream, and downstream locations and tested, and all found to pass the HPC regulatory limit.

COMMUNICATION:

This second Water Quality Quarterly Report, after being received by Council, will be on the public record and available to the public. Waterworks will prepare and submit two additional Water Quality Quarterly reports for 2004. The quarterly reports will, at the end of 2004, form part of the Annual Regulatory Report to the Ministry of Environment under Section 11 and Schedule 22 of Regulation 170/03 on Municipal Drinking Water System.

CURRENT AND FUTURE ACTIVITIES TO BE UNDERTAKEN BY WATERWORKS:

In September 2003, Waterworks initiated valve operating program as a part of regulatory compliance and best practices. This activity consists of inspection of valve enclosures, closing and opening of valves, recording the number of turns, and collecting other relevant data.

This program will improve water flows through the water distribution system, as it will identify and locate inappropriately closed valves as well as valves which are broken. To this date, 1,575 valves out a total of 6,479 valves have been operated and checked.

As a regulatory requirement, Waterworks has, on July 5, 2004, started to implement a comprehensive system dead-end flushing and chlorine residual sampling of the more than 300 dead-ends throughout the Town. As of August 9, 2004, a total of 87 dead-ends have been flushed and sampled.

The first part of this program is to calibrate each dead-end flushing frequency and flushed water volume in order to determine the optimum flushing periods and times for each location. This may result in increased number of low reportable chlorine residual samples as well as it will increase water losses due to the quantity of water being flushed out of the system.

As part of the program to minimize non-compliance samples and to improve the sampling efficiencies, Waterworks has begun to install pedestal sampling stations within the right-of-way. A total of 86 sampling stations will be installed. This work is expected to be completed by November 1, 2004. The sampling stations will eliminate sampling through the private plumbing systems, and should reduce the number of failed (coliform-positive) samples resulting from the private side of water service connection.

We will report on the progress of these programs in the third and fourth water quality quarterly reports.

ATTACHMENTS:

Attachment “A” – Markham Second Water Quality Quarterly Report for April 1 to June 30, 2004

Stan Bertoia, P.Eng. General Manager, Construction and Utilities

Peter Loukes, P. Eng. Director, Operations and Asset Management

____________________________________

Jim Sales

Commissioner of Community and Fire

Services

Q:\Commission Share\Operations and Asset Management\Reports\2004\C & U\Second Water Quarterly Report.doc