WATER TREATMENT FACTS:
A YEAR OF WEEKLY MESSAGES FROM
THE ERICKSON WATER USERS SOCIETY

JUNE 2000 - JULY 2001

WORDS OF INTRODUCTION

For over a year, from June 2000 through July 2001, we have been presenting a series of ads in the Creston Valley Advance which we have called "Water Treatment Facts: a Weekly Message from the Erickson Water Users Society." Our objective has been to present only verifiable facts to show that we feel it would be a serious mistake to set up a water treatment system based on chlorination when better methods of treating drinking water are available, and to show that current "conventional wisdom" and the established power structures make opposition to the use of chemicals like chlorine quite difficult.

But we believe that, as the saying goes, "The truth shall set you free." We firmly believe that society has entered a period which could be called a "chlorine sunset," when the real environmental and human health hazards of the wide-spread use of chlorine are beginning to be realized, not only by the scientific community, but by humanity in general. In that regard, we feel that the use of chlorination as a water disinfectant has become obsolescent, and will eventually become obsolete. However, that won't happen unless more people are made aware of the facts.

In the course of the many months our ads have run, some of our readers have been suggesting that we somehow compile our FACTS into some sort of organized whole to provide a single source for the several different topics we have addressed. Most ads address more than one topic, so our decision as to which of the six topics each ad would be placed under had to be somewhat arbitrary.

This document is, then, the result of our year of informational ads and of our attempt to place them into an organized whole.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I: The Struggle
II: Short-Comings of Chlorination
III: The Science
IV: Testing of Drinking Water
V: Walkerton
VI: UV Systems

OUR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We owe a debt of gratitude to the small local businesses which have made our series of WATER TREATMENT FACTS possible by sponsoring these ads as they appreared in the Creston Valley Advance every Monday. Those sponsoring more than one ad were: Creston U Brew (ten), Drapes to Floor You (seven), Pozniak Enterprises (seven), Margo's Farm (two), hmr associates (two), and Water Pure and Simple (two). Others sponsors were Kozy Tent and Trailer Park, Goat River Lodge, Little Joe's Fruit Stand and Campground, H and L Woodcraft, and Werner's Plumbing. Two sponsors asked to remain anonymous.

We also must thank our many members and contributors who, with their donations have made it possible to print several FACTS which we presented as sponsored by the Erickson Water Users Society alone.

I: THE STRUGGLE

As more and more evidence regarding the many negative aspects of the use of chlorine for water treatment mounts up, the average citizen may begin to wonder why chlorination is still the treatment of choice in most of North America (although no longer so in Europe). Chlorine has been used to treat drinking water for about a hundred years, so bureaucratic inertia certainly must be a factor.

However, as a recent small news item in Water World, the trade magazine of the American Water Works Association, indicates, the chlorine industry does have a lot of muscle, and will oppose any move to reduce the use of chlorine. The news item titled, "EPA Removes MCLG for Chloroform," states that the U.S. government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had, in 1998, set a Maximun Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG) of zero for chloroform in drinking water. Then, because chloroform is one of the likely by-products of chlorination, the Chlorine Chemistry Council and the Chemical Manufacturers Association took the EPA to court. Opposing the rather desirable goal of no chloroform in drinking water, the chlorine industry was able to force the EPA to remove that goal from its National Primary Drinking Water Regulations!

Drinkers of chlorinated water in the U.S. can now continue to enjoy drinking water laced with chloroform without fear of any clean-up action by the U.S. government, thanks to the alert legal action of those stalwart defenders of the chemical status quo.

For the past fifteen weeks, the Erickson Water Users Society (EWUS) have been focusing on a particular aspect of water treatment in each of our weekly messages, and we plan to continue doing so, with the very welcome help of those businesses which have been the sponsors, along with any others who may also wish to help. However, today we will focus specifically on our own organization.

Many of you will remember that the Erickson Water Users was formed in 1998, after it became very clear 1) that the vast majority of Erickson residents strongly objected to the order by the EKCHSS' Medical Health Officer that the EID chlorinate our drinking (and irrigation) water, and 2) that the EID Trustees would probably not be able to resist this official pressure much longer unless they had the active support of the people. Then, when it became clear that the EID was about to be forced to begin chlorination with a temporary liquid chlorine unit, EWUS became a registered non-profit society and initiated a judicial review to try to stop chlorination in court.

That was in April 1999, and we are still chlorine-free. A lot of things have happened, but we are still in litigation, a costly process, even though the Sierra Legal Defense Fund has provided a lawyer.

In the meanwhile, technology has been moving rapidly forward in the area of water treatment, and there are better and better water treatment systems being developed which do not need chlorine. The law requires treatment, but not necessarily chlorine.

But the chlorine industry and its public servants relentlessly push chlorination as the only answer, so we must not cease our struggle, especially since we may be close to a non-chlorine solution.

For the past twenty weeks, the Erickson Water Users Society has been bringing you facts about water treatment--facts which support our contention that we don't need, and don't want, our good Erickson water to be ruined by chlorination. We hope that these ads have been a source of interest to the reading public and especially to the good people in the Erickson Improvement District. And we are encouraged by the enthusiastic response we have had from many who have been reading our treatment facts, and by the local business which have been sponsoring so many ads for so long.

Of course, the people of Erickson are not the only ones who oppose chlorination or who are being affected by the practice of disinfecting drinking water by adding this volitile and hazardous chemical to it. We hope we have been helpful for all, pointing out what we believe are some of the reasons that, before long, chlorination will be phased out everywhere, becoming as obsolete as the practice of bleeding people who are sick, which went on for hundreds of years before doctors finally realized that it did no good and actually did a lot of harm.

Now, we ask for your support in opposing our Medical Health Officer's latest attempted power-play to force chlorination of our water: namely, his request to the Minister of Municipal Affairs to disolve our EID and appoint a political bureaucrat to run our District. We are doing everything we can, but it would really be helpful if you readers would give the Minister a call to let him know that you support the EID Trustees, the Erickson Water Users Society, the Water Action Group, and all the Erickson water users.

In this, our first message of the New Year, we will introduce a concept which seems simple and rather obvious at first glance, but which the promoters of the chemical and environmental status quo regard as a kind of heresy. This concept is called "The Precautionary Principle." In his well- known report of the Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada, Justice Krever emphasized the importance of that tenet in the philospohy of public health when he pointed out that "action to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty."

The reason the precautionary principle is generally opposed by those who wish to uphold the chemical status quo is that it would place the burden of proof on them instead of on ordinary citizens (like the Erickson water users), and would logically require those who advocate the use of a particular substance or activity to prove that it would not have deleterious effects on people or the environment. In the case of those advocating chlorination, following the precautionary principle would suggest, for example, that they prove that chlorination has not been a factor in the many studies which indicate higher incidents of various cancers and birth malfunctions among people who regularly drink chlorinated water.

Although the precautionary principle would seem to be a matter of common sense, until the present, ordinary citizens have had to prove that harm is being done before measures are taken to stop the harm. That situation is being re-evaluated all over the world today.

We had another message ready on the subject of the "Precautionay Principle," but the events of the past few days make it necessary to go in a different direction today.

Over the past few days, the proponants of chlorination have mounted a nation-wide propoganda blitz to prepare the way for the B.C. NDP government to take over the EID and appoint a reciever to run the District. We must assume that the man hired to act as the receiver will have also been instructed to install a chlorination system here as soon as possible, although the Honourable Corky Evans has stated publicly that the receiver will listen to our point of view. That would be a welcome change! But we'll try even that.

The Erickson Water Users Society will continue to do all that we can to prevent the degrading of our water with this cancer-causing, ineffective, and environmentally unfriendly poison. Our litigation is, once again, underway, and we are examining all other possible avenues we might take to preserve the excellent quality of our water.

One thing we believe is that those who have an honest cause have no need to mislead the ones they are trying to convince.

Today we will continue presenting aspects of the "Precautionary Principle," as an important tenet of public health philosophy. The precautionary principle has been defined as, "when an activity [like chlorination] raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." This principle is becoming a primary consideration for public health and the environment throughout the world, especially in the European community, where chlorination is being phased out in favour of other water treatment systems which are less hazardous and actually more effective.

In the Rio Declaration from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as Agenda 21, it was pointed out that "...the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States.... Where there are threats of serious or irreparable damage, lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures...."

Of course, in the case of chlorination, it is already accepted that there is a link to cancer and a probable link to birth anomolies (Health Canada, etc.), and the questions now are just "How much? and How many varieties?" And modern technology is providing better alternatives.

Today, we will stray a bit from our usual Facts to reflect on the past few years of the struggle of the water users of Erickson to preserve the quality of their water supply. It has been a struggle which has brought first, area attention, then provincial attention, and now national attention. Not all the media coverage has been favourable, but some of it has been, more of it is going that way, and all of it has begun to have some effect in raising people's consciousness of the most valuable resource we have: water.

In the 16 January 2001 issue of THE MEDICAL POST, it was stated that our Medical Health Officer had complained about "distortion of information" surrounding our water battle. We will heartily agree with that sentiment. However, we know of no such distortion from our ranks. This series of weekly messages is one example of our care in presenting our point of view. We have been careful in these messages--and will continue to take care--to present only facts that can be verified. For example, anyone who wishes to do so may read the issue of the magazine referred to above (and we do recommend it) to verify the reference to our MHO's complaint.

Throughout Europe and in much of the rest of the world, the 100-year long practice of disinfecting drinking water with chlorine is being discontinued in favour of new technologies which are more effective and less hazardous. One of these newer technologies involves the use of ultraviolet light (UV) to render microorganisms in water harmless.

Even in the United States, the land of powerful chemical industries and their Chlorine Chemistry Council, the use of UV for water disinfection is getting a second look from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the agency responsible for re-writing the U.S. water regulations. At the same time, much stricter rules over the amount of chlorination by-products to be allowed in drinking water are also being established by the U.S.EPA. Very soon, water purveyors in the U.S. will be forced to spend a lot more on complicated, costly regular testing for "disinfection by-products" (DBPs) if they use chlorine to disinfect, although those who use UV need not have that expense.

In Canada, we can be sure that such strict and costly regulations regarding chlorinated water systems will soon be coming into effect as well, as predictable as day following night. Surely, that should be a wake-up call for any government or community thinking of installing a new chlorination system instead of a more reasonable modern alternative.

A short time ago, we pointed out that our MHO had complained about "distortion of information" regarding our struggle to avoid degrading our water with chlorine. We agreed, but noted that we were not doing the distorting. Today we will refer to one of the items being distorted: namely, the cost of an alternate water treatment we might find suitable.

On numerous occasions, media have been informed (not by us) that the treatment method we would prefer would cost $6 million, while the cost of chlorination would be a modest $1 million. Actually, the first plan we had proposed (point-of-entry with filter and UV) would have been much cheaper than gas chlorination alone, considerably less than $1 million. The current multi-barrier plan devised by an engineer hired by the EID ( which we only partially endorse) would cost $2.2 million, mostly for a chlorination system, which we oppose.

On the other hand, chlorination alone is no longer automatically acceptable, even by Health officials. The $1 million gas chlorination proposed for Erickson would have had to have a $6 million slow sand filtration system attached to make it acceptable to our Health Engineer, according to a letter he wrote along with his certificate of approval for the chlorination plant.

Recently, the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.A. aired a TV documentary titled, "Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report." The report stated, "One of the major themes running through the internal chemical industry documents investigated is the industry's opposition to the precautionary principle. It has used its wealth to win favourable treatment from politicians, sponsored surrogates to promote the industry point of view with the media, and is now pushing legislation through state legislatures [in the

U. S.] that will overturn many of the gains citizens believe they have made in their right to information about toxic chemicals."

The precautionary principle ("When doubt exists as to safety, the benefit of the doubt should be on the side of protecting public safety.") was adopted in 1992 by the European Union as a basis for regulating toxic chemicals. One result has been the on-going phasing out of the use of chlorine as a disinfectant for drinking water throughout the EU.

So far, the chemical industry, represented by trade asociations such as the Chemical Manufactures' Association and the Chlorine Chemistry Council, has been successful in preventing the adoption of the precautionary principle in North America. In this new documentary, the PBS asserted, "In its decades-long effort to limit the regulation of chemicals, the industry's Washington trade association declared: 'This is war--not a battle'."

Last week we referred to a PBS documentary on the chemical industry's resistance to the precautionary principle in public health matters.

One example given in the documentary was the media "spin" by the chemical industry to portray the anti-chlorine movement as a few "activists" putting the world at risk of cholera epidemics. The Chlorine Chemisrty Council's director, C.T. Howlett Jr., was quoted in reference to a cholera epidemic in Peru saying, "It was a politically correct policy directive that got out of hand," regarding a government decision there to discontinue chlorination of drinking water without first implementing an alternate method of water treatment.

One implication was that those who oppose chlorination also oppose treatment of drinking water. And that, of course, is not true. The chemical industry public relations people know that, but they hope the general public will take their "spin" at face value.

We are reminded of the statement by our Medical Health Officer some time ago about the discontinuence of chlorination in Peru which led to many deaths. Evidently, great minds think alike.

Another example of the power of large corporations to over-ride attempts to keep chemicals and other pollutants out of drinking water has again emerged in the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), after many scientific studies of the situation during the past ten years, recently dropped the allowable level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb, a standard which had been adopted in the European Union (EU) in 1998. The World Health Organization (WHO) had advocated an even higher standard, pointing out that there is no safe level for arsenic in drinking water, since it has been proven to be linked to various cancers, hormonal irregularities, and birth anomalies (much like the chemical, chlorine).

Unfortunately, President Bush has now used his powers to force the EPA to put the allowable level of arsenic back to 50 ppb. The industries which are responsible for producing a lot of the arsenic found in drinking water had been heavy finacial supporters of Bush in the recent Presidential campaign, and didn't like the new lower allowable level of arsenic because it would have caused some extra cost for them to clean up their act.

Once again, even though the evidence is in that this move will result in suffering and death for a large number of people, the profit motive takes priority. That same motive drives the powerful chemical industry to continue resisting the phasing out of chlorination, their "poster boy" use of chlorine, even though more effective and less hazardous non-chemical methods are available.

Albert Einstein once observed: "A clever person solves a problem; a wise person avoids it." That statement could well be applied to many things people are doing to the environment today, and would be especially applicable to Canada's (and Erickson's) drinking water. In the past, pristine drinking water was taken for granted like most of the abundant resources available here years ago. Little thought was given to taking care of what there was, and if contamination happened, there was always the "cheap and effective" chlorine to make it safe.

However, we now know that the chlorine used to disinfect the water is, in itself, a hazard to human health, and doesn't always kill the bugs. Since the early 1970's scientific studies have proved that the by-products of chlorination are definite carcinogens and suspected factors in miscarriages and birth defects. Now, more studies are going on to pin-point the amount and types of hazards involved. And meanwhile, clever people are producing less hazardous and more effective methods of water treatment.

But as the threat of logging the headwaters of Arrow Creek looms larger, there is a need for wisdom to be applied to the Arrow Creek watershed. Clever modern water treatment can never take the place of wise protection of the source of the water that is so important to the well-being of this entire valley.

With all the well-justified concerns arising from the imminent logging of our watershed and the appointment of a receiver to take control of the EID from our duly-elected trustees, and with all the related issues developing from those concerns, we must not lose sight of what has brought us all together, our original objective: to keep chlorine out of our water. Perhaps a little review would be in order.

Chlorination is a 100-year-old technology whose time has passed. As the evidence against it mounts up, it now is clear that chlorination is not only a proven human health hazard, but also presents environmental problems. Lately, outbreaks of water-borne diseases in communities with chlorinated treatment systems also prove that chlorination is not effective against several different pathogens.

One respose by those advocating chlorination is that it may be less of a hazard and better than not disinfecting the water at all. But there are new and superior ways of treating drinking water, methods less hazardous and less likely to affect the quality of the water, as well as being more effective, so that argument is without merit. Even the last fall-back position of the chlorinators, that a chlorine residual is always necessary, has been proven to be untrue.

Today we will, once again, refer to the concept of the "Precautionary Principle" as it affects the use of chlorine in water treatment. That principle has been formulated in various ways, and in various international conferences and treaties, as well as being enacted into law on a Europe-wide basis, and being mentioned in the Kreever Report in Canada. In 1998 an international panel of scientists, government researchers, and other representatives from Canada, the U.S.A., and Europe formulated the "Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle" as follows: "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically."

However, in North America that principle is being vigorously opposed by big industry, and especially by the representatives of the chemical industry such as the Chlorine Chemistry Council. Although the fact that chlorination by-products in drinking water are now known to be carcinogens and are suspected of leading to birth anomolies and other health hazards, the chemical industry attacks the science involved, using its own hired scientists and high-priced public relations companies, and also argues that even if there may be some hazards, using chlorine is better than not treating the water at all.

But we know that better and less hazardous ways to treat drinking water already exist.