As an active participant in the struggles around chlorination in Erickson I thought I would share my views on the contending issues, which might not always be apparent from afar.

I first became involved when decade long friend Ralph Moore invited me to a demonstration at the East Kootenay Health Community Services Society office in Creston last fall. While there was the usual youth and angry-at-government contingent, this particular demonstration had the air of an inter-generational community affair. In fact a subsequent survey revealed that 90% plus of the community were opposed to chlorination.

Further, unlike my home community of Kaslo, the people had a very definite idea of what kind of disinfectant they wanted - ultra-violet irradiation with filtration. Their Improvement District trustees had even conducted a pilot test for two years and found that this method substantially met the requirements of BC's Safe Drinking Water Regulations.

This is a remarkable feat in and of itself, since many rural communities are extremely resistant to change. "If it ain't broke", goes the saying, "don't fix it". In this instance many of the rural communities in the West Kootenay have been purveying water since they first came into existence between 75 to over 100 years ago, without any continuous treatment.

Unlike urban British Columbians, rural communities are still not separated from the realities of life, be it sickness and even death itself. "Any fool knows," stated a retired health professional (who is a neighbour of mine in Kaslo), "that you boil the water in any month that does not have an 'r' in it. Besides you should have seen the old reservoir. We constantly had to scrape the algae off it and fish dead animals out of the water."

In fact one of the more interesting conversations I had during my bid for Mayor of Kaslo last fall was with a women who phoned up to ask what (if she could drink the water for the last 80 years) all the fuss was about. "Well", I explained cautiously, "the health authorities are concerned that visitors, tourists and people moving from urban areas might get sick from our water supply". "Send them all back from where they came from", was the angry retort to that statement.

On the surface such a reply seems very parochial and quite backward...the kind of statement that you would expect from a country bumpkin not quite up to speed with our modern world. Unless of course you reflect on the logic behind the thinking.

The frustration being expressed is one in which she, an elderly resident, is being expected to adapt to the needs of outsiders, be they urbanites or eco tourists. Her body has adapted to the local water and her immune system can tolerate the bacteria and viruses which naturally occur in it. And the question she poses (as does my retired health professional neighbour) is why should we adapt the environment to suit our human needs?

This is a deeply ecological question that underlies the battle lines being drawn in Erickson. The overwhelming number of community residents recognize that they live in a rural area whose water supply is designed to meet a multifaceted number of needs. Potable and domestic water is barely 1% of the 6 million gallons which flow through the pipes on a daily basis during fruit and vegetable growing season.

In fact Erickson residents are having a deeply ecological conversation behind the scenes. On the one hand some members of the East Kootenay Environmental Society (EKES) are quite surprised that fruit and vegetable growers who use biocides (insecticides, fungicides, etc) on a daily basis during the growing season are so adamant that chlorine should not be placed in the water supply.

The newly formed Erickson Water Users Society (EWUS - some of whose members belong to EKES) on the other hand are highly critical of the fact that two EKES members are on the board of the Creston Valley Community Forest, because their chart area creates the potential for logging in Arrow Creek - the source of the water that Dr Andrew Larder, Medical Health officer for East Kootenay Health Community Services Society (EKHCSS), wants chlorinated.

EWUS is adamant that Arrow Creek (also a source of supply for the Labatt's brewery and the Town of Creston) should be protected from all logging that would in their opinion alter the quantity, quality and timing of flow. EKES, however, responds that without community involvement logging would be done by a traditional and/or transnational clear cut corporation.

Better that local people, including the Lower Kootenay Band, manage human intervention in Arrow Creek, argues EKES. No, argues EWUS. We should completely oppose any logging that jeopardizes our domestic, agricultural and industrial water supply. No, says EKES and others who want to avoid the alternative proposition of having the BC Ministry of Forests maintain a traditional Annual Allowable Cut, as is being done in the Slocan Valley.

Around and around goes the argument with no proposed solution in sight, until Dr Andrew Larder enters the scene. Concerned about an early 1990's giardia outbreak in the water supply, he wants to end 68 years without disinfection in order to ensure that the EKHCSS mandate under the BC Safe Drinking Water Regulation is complied with.

Behind this administrative desire is a genuine fear that any resident or developer could take the Medical Health officer to court for failing to provide potable water. To date, however, Dr Larder and EKHCSS have remained silent on potential problems related to logging in community and domestic watersheds. For now they simply want Erickson water to meet traditional urban water treatment standards, without dealing with potential sediment load caused by logging.

As members of the Slocan Valley Watershed Alliance know, our steep mountain slopes and streams are already quite unstable and very prone to seasonal blowouts during spring run-off or summer storms, without adding in the unpredictability caused by run-off from logging roads and clear cut logging. Clearly the level of sediment already naturally occurring in our streams is extremely problematic in relation to emerging concerns about chlorine and its interaction with inorganic and organic materials - an interaction which creates a plethora of carcinogenic compounds that are then ingested by humans.

But the common concerns in Erickson over chlorine go much further, as the affidavits that were filed in Cranbrook Supreme Court on June 3 attest. Fruit and vegetable growers, both organic and non-organic, are concerned about the impacts that chlorine will have on agricultural production. Such fears are highlighted by a spring 1999 study conducted by two Creston high school students who found that lettuce grown in chlorinated water showed signs of stunting, as the plants were less able to absorb water and turn nutrients into plant food.

One affidavit notes that the aquatic life in their family pond will be destroyed, while others note that chlorinated irrigation will flow directly into fish bearing streams. Such a situation contravenes the federal Fisheries Act (1985) and more importantly the recently introduced Contaminated Sites Regulation (375/96) of the Waste Management Act (RSBC 1996). Schedule 6 of the Generic Numerical Water Standards stipulates that water designated for aquatic life can contain no more than 0.02 parts per million (ppm) of chlorine, and irrigation water itself no more than 1 ppm.

In a letter to the Erickson Improvement District (EID) dated February 17, 1999, Regional Public Health Engineer Ove Hals requires as a condition of the construction permit that there be a minimum of .2 ppm "free available residual chlorine" at "the far ends of the system", further noting that"...at least 0.5 ppm of free available chlorine will be present after a minimum contact time of 30 minutes...". Even allowing for a minimum dilution of 1:10 under the Regulation, a .2 ppm free residual will be in contravention as samples must include both "substance concentrations" and dissolved "substance concentrations" in the analysis. Thus any chlorine that is attached to inorganic and/or organic compounds, or has become a chlorinated-by-product, must be included in the total analysis.

Of even more interest is the fact that the EID holds some 27 "waterworks" and "irrigation" licenses, while the Safe Drinking Water Regulation (230/92) and the Health Act Fees Regulation (274/92) only gives Dr Larder jurisdiction over "potable" and "domestic" water. In fact the sections of the Municipal Act related to Improvement Districts appear to give the EID exclusive control over the irrigation water, and require the trustees to pass bylaws before enacting any services. Thus there appears to be a plethora of Acts and Regulations which overlap with Dr Larder's jurisdiction.

As a consequence those in Erickson who have been manning a blockade since April 27, 1999 (to prevent completion of the chlorine facility) went into Supreme Court in Cranbrook on June 4 claiming that it was they and not Dr Larder who were trying to uphold the law. In the interim, between an attempt to have the chlorination order stayed on April 30 and a pending judicial review slated for June 22/23, Dr Larder started fining the EID $345 per day for failing to comply with a February 11, 1998 chlorination order, and then cancelled the EID's operating permit. This now means that the EID is providing water illegally to its own residents, the Town of Creston and Labatt's brewery. This action has been undertaken by Dr Larder in an attempt to force the EID to seek an injunction against the 20% of residents who were actively manning the blockade.

Unfortunately the EID's attempt to seek an injunction was turned back by Mr. Justice Melnick who felt that the matters to be discussed in the injunction hearing paralleled those being discussed in the scheduled judicial review, and therefore he felt it inappropriate for two judges in separate courts to hear the same evidence and possibly reach different conclusions. Thus the blockade will have been in place for 57 days by the time the judicial review is held, and Dr Larder has had to stop fining the EID since they are unable to either comply and/or legally end the blockade.

In fact a drive along the main Creston to Cranbrook road finds large signs proudly proclaiming: "Welcome to Erickson, A Chlorine Free Zone". A further 200 plus lawn signs dot Erickson with a chlorine chemical symbol surrounded by a red circle with a diagonal red slash transversing the circle. All this is contrary to MLA Corky Evans' media exhortation on Tuesday, May 25 that Erickson residents should fall into line behind their trustees who were seeking an injunction so that they could finally "obey the law". Two weeks later, after the injunction had failed to materialize, officials in the Ministry of Health stated that Dr Larder was acting independently of the NDP government and the EKHCSS would have to take all legal costs out of their existing budget.

Further the Attorney General's Ministry has now twice declined to participate in a "Constitutional Questions Act" challenge of the original chlorination order and Dr Larder's attempts to enforce it. To date 7 individuals have filed affidavits citing sensitivities to chlorine, two persons stating that they have previously had to move as a result of chlorination in the past. At stake in this challenge is the issue of whether section 5(1) of the Safe Drinking Water Regulation applies to all water users: "A water purveyor must provide potable water to all users served by the waterworks system".

What the BC government, Medical Health officers and municipal governments are being confronted with is a determined effort to stop forced chlorination of a water supply. In Kaslo 72% of those voting rejected simple chlorination in the January 9, 1999 referendum. Last fall 90% plus residents of Erickson who were surveyed also rejected chlorination. And now the very act of ordering chlorination is being challenged as unconstitutional, as it violates the rights of those persons who are physically sensitive to chlorine. Further if their rights are upheld they also have a legal right to protection under both section 7 and the mobility rights section 6 of the Charter.

In conclusion it would appear that the citizenry of the West Kootenays have taken to heart the decade old decision to remove organo-chlorines from pulp and paper production, by refusing to add it back into their water supply. As Justice Horace Krever stated in the conclusion to his Report on the tainted blood supply: a fundamental tenet of public health policy is that "action to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty". Clearly the overwhelming majority of the public believe that the health risks of chlorine are greater than the potential benefits which might accrue from its use as a form of disinfectant.