Drinking water quality in small northern communities

The heightened public awareness of environmental issues has brought with it increased public concern with drinking water duality. All communities are faced with meeting higher water quality standards with aging facilities and limits to fiscal resources, but it is the smallest communities that face the greatest challenge. Presented is an evaluation of drinking water quality for the communities in the Alberta portion of the Peace and Athabasca River Basins. There are roughly 180 drinking water facilities in the region with roughly 105 surface water facilities and 75 groundwater facilities. The evaluation was based on existing data obtained from Alberta Environmental Protection (AEP) and data and information collected during site visits to 38 communities. The existing data included AEP's treated water survey results which had 460 samples from 85 locations in the basins and 72,000 microbial samples taken at all locations in the basins over a seven year period from 1988 to 1995. The information gathered from the site visits included analyses of grab samples of raw, treated and distributed drinking water for trihalomethanes (THMs), microbial parameters and other routine drinking water quality parameters. The evaluation of the drinking water quality indicated that generally small facilities produced a lower quality drinking water than larger facilities and there was a strong argument that some small facilities were having difficulty meeting Canadian drinking water quality guidelines with regard to microbial standards. The data also indicated that several facilities would not meet the THM standard of 100 ug/L. It should be noted that the findings for the Peace and Athabasca River Basins area are not unique, data from the rest of the province showed a similar situation with small communities producing poorer drinking water than large communities. Similar findings have also been reported in the United States. These findings highlight difficulty many small facilities have in producing an acceptable quality of water.