I have asked my partner, Andy Shadrack, to read this statement as I am too sick to be here today, but would have come as a representative of the Kaslo and District Environment Society. Protecting the quality, quantity and timing of flow of water has been a major concern of our organization and indeed to everyone in Kaslo during the last few years, as it has in the entire Kootenay area. More and more people are worried about keeping their water supplies clean, especially with increased logging in community and domestic watersheds and on steep slopes, which often results in the further risk of landslides that wreak serious havoc on water sources. And who ends up paying for this destruction? Usually the landowners whose water sources have been compromised or even lost...and of course the taxpayers. Certainly not the people who are responsible for it.

Walkerton has really focused our attention on problems with water. However my worry is that the wrong conclusions will be publicized at the end of the hearings. Surely the most important lesson that can be drawn is: protect water at its source - whether that be a well or a watershed. It seems ludicrous to me, and to others who share my concerns, to contaminate water, either directly through industrial logging or through some other human activity as happened in Walkerton, and then just pour in a chemical like chlorine and walk away thinking that the problem is solved. Keep water clean at its source. That is pure common sense. So why don't we do that? Prevention, a long term solution, always saves money. Short term answers always have long term consequences, many of which are quite serious.

According to Brent Davis of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Friday January 12, 2001, Health Canada epidemiologist Dr Andrea Ellis testified at the Walkerton hearings by saying:

"It was apparent that chlorination alone was not going to be able to treat the water that was coming into well 5, which was surface water...There just weren't the barriers in place at that well."

Dr Ellis who studied the circumstances surrounding May's E.coli outbreak at the request of the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound Health Unit later spoke of the need for Medical Health officers not to overreact when water supplies are not contaminated at their source:

"If we were to issue boil-water advisories every time we saw a cluster of gastroenteritis in a community, we would have boil-water advisories on constantly across this country."

In this context I sincerely hope this information is getting out into the public. Because if it's not, then there's a town somewhere in Canada right now, near a large cattle feedlot (for that's the only source of ecoli 451 outbreaks that have been recorded since the first one in the 1980's), with plenty of chlorine in their water but no protection at its source. Another mass contamination like the one in Walkerton and people who believe they're protected...are probably not. This cannot be allowed to happen. Give people the information they need to make intelligent and well informed choices. And protect the water at its source.

And what about the fact that studies are revealing that chlorine is a long term health hazard? It is not only the cause of cancer after long term use, but is now linked to birth defects and spontaneous abortions in women according to some studies.

Here in British Columbia the Ministry of the Environment has spent millions of dollars and years working to remove chlorine from pulp mill effluent and thus keep it out of the environment. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health says: "go ahead, dump chlorine in your domestic water and you'll be fine". But where does it go after it's washed down the drain or flushed down the toilet? It goes into septic tanks, into sewers, and it seeps into the ground, and then into rivers and lakes..into the environment.

One Ministry says "take it out" while another says, "put it in". And then there's the Ministry of Forests which still insists on spraying herbicides and pesticides in Kootenay forests, and these too escape into rivers, lakes and streams...into the environment. How is all this protecting water at its source?

Besides chlorination does not tackle giardia and cryptosporidia. All the literature states that both can survive in pure bleach so why does the Ministry of Health persist in promoting a chemical that does not address half the waterborne disease outbreaks that occur in BC?

For myself, I have a more immediate problem with chlorine. I am allergic to it. I have a condition called Multiple Chemical Sensitivities which means that the majority of chemicals that we use in our society make me extremely ill, including chlorine. My symptoms, when exposed to chlorine, range from fairly mild skin rashes to breathing problems and full blown reactions which involve nausea, shaking of my body from the inside out, severe fatigue, and flu like symptoms.

I volunteered in 1993 to sit on Kaslo's water disinfection committee (formed by the Village Council). There's been a long history of opposition to chlorine in Kaslo, culminating in a referendum in January 1999 in which 71% of voters said no to the chlorination of our drinking water. I sat on the Committee to represent people like myself, to make sure that our needs were not overlooked.

But in the end they were. The Village started putting residual chlorine into the water in May of 2000. I had to borrow money to buy a whole house water filtration system to once again make the water potable for me, and this was very expensive.

Meanwhile I have a friend who lives a few blocks away who is living on a small, fixed income and cannot afford such a system. She is extremely sensitive to chlorine. She has been forced to tell the Village to shut off her water and now lives on what few litres of unchlorinated water that friends bring her every day. She bathes at my place. That is absolutely unacceptable.

Section 5.1 of the BC Safe Drinking Water Regulation states:

"A water purveyor must provide potable water to all users served by the waterworks system"

Based on that, and on Sections 6, 7 and 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I have launched a constitutional challenge in BC Supreme Court that says people like me also have the right to potable water, and that we must not be discriminated against. It's in black and white and its the law. So the purpose of my suit is to make sure that water purveyors all across BC and government ministries uphold the constitution of Canada.

Water is so basic to human life and we use it for so many things. I challenge other people to try to live on a few litres of water every day - for everything: drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning and flushing the toilet (never mind watering your garden). It's almost impossible. But my friend has no choice but to do that.

So I hope that I have brought three points forward to these hearings:

1) protect water at its source and

2) make sure that water treatment is potable for everyone, with no exceptions.

3) where still used reimburse those who cannot tolerate chlorine for the full cost of filtration systems

Water is a resource that we cannot afford to waste, that people cannot afford to live without and around which any problems and concerns must be met with complete and accurate information so that people can make safe, healthy choices.

Finally I urge the Ministry of Environment to revisit its own studies like the Kootenay Water Quality Survey: Final Report delivered to them by Angus Reid on March 19, 1998.

Of 600 people surveyed a majority used common sense:

74% opposed Residential Development in a domestic or community watersheds

73% Mining/Mineral Extraction

71% Cattle Grazing

64% Motorized Recreation

54% Forestry

51% Agriculture

Please use some common sense an end all industrial and human activity in our community and domestic watersheds, and bring water protection under one lead agency in BC.

Water, we cannot live without it.

Thank you

Gail Bauman Kaslo, BC