Bradford residents can confidently go with the flow when they turn on their faucet.
Council received an update on the town’s drinking water system in a report from compliance manager Samantha MacKenzie during a recent meeting.
That had councillors awash in good news, with MacKenzie noting that the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks' annual inspection found no issues of non-compliance for 2023 in the system, which provided 3,646,266 cubic metres of treated drinking water to 36,378 people, including residential as well as industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) consumers.
Those ICI consumers accounted for about three per cent of the serviced population.
Mayor James Leduc called it a “very extensive report,” with “lots of good information,” and emphasized how important it is for councillors to read through it “thoroughly” because “it is our responsibility to ensure the job is done right.”
“We had a clean bill of health here. It’s nice to see we had no issues,” he said. “(Staff) do an excellent job of keeping our water safe.”
It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing last year, though, and according to the report, out of 885 microbiological samples analyzed from the system, there was one incident of bacteria exceeding the allowed limit which included the presence of 12 colony forming units (cfu) per 100 millilitres of coliform and one cfu/100 ml of E. coli.
No amount of either is permitted with allowable limits of zero cfu/100 ml.
“All necessary corrective actions were taken to resolve the incident,” MacKenzie said in the report. “It should be noted that the adverse incident did not result in any indication of adverse health impact to the public.”
During the meeting she explained further that the single incident was more likely the result of “bad sampling practices.”
“It came from a sample station where there might have been a little bit of a leak when they were taking the samples,” said Joe Gratrix, the town’s manager of water. “It was just a handling error ... not reflective of the system.”
Deputy Mayor Raj Sandhu thanked them both for their efforts.
“I know since Walkerton how hard and strict it has become to do all these samplings and we always pass with flying colours,” he said. “You guys always do an excellent job.”
Staff also reported two water-main breaks to the local medical officer of health for having the potential to allow contamination of the system — one at 157 Holland St. E., on June 28, 2023, and the other at 141 Mason Ave., on Aug. 23, 2023.
Luckily, in both cases samples were analyzed and found to be “well within” the maximum allowable concentrations.
While municipal wells extracted 1,449,179 cubic metres of groundwater from the Bradford Aquifer to account for about 40 per cent of the total used, another 2,197,087, or about 60 per cent, was supplied by InnService from the Innisfil Lake Simcoe Water Filtration plant, according to the report.
The water from the aquifer is tested for bacteria before being treated with liquid chlorine, and while water from the Innisfil plant is already treated, Bradford re-treats it “as necessary.”
At 181 kilometres in length, Bradford’s system includes 1,385 hydrants and provided an average of 274.6 litres per person per day, which is lower than the 2022 average of 290.6.
No pumping stations exceeded their allowable flow rates in 2023.
During 2023, $1,761,186 was spent on system maintenance including:
- Transmission water-main pipe diver ($1.5 million)
- Cathodic protection on ductile iron water main ($188,977)
- Church well roof and hatch replacement ($39,500)
- Acetemium supervisory control and data acquisition maintenance contract ($16,500)
- Reservoir cells remotely operated vehicle inspection ($13,509)
- Leak detection, Holland Street, Drury Street and Mary Street ($2,700).
