Feature Article June 10, 2004
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Scrap regulation 170? not a bad ideaHere at the News, we dont like to admit seeing eye to eye with our earnest competition from the south, but last week they called for the scrapping of the provinces water regulation - and they were right.
Regulation 170/03 of the Safe Drinking Water Act will cost each local township $100,000 over the next two years, and will force churches to spend $10,000 or more if they dont want to close down their church kitchens.
But it wont end there. The regulation will apply to every restaurant, snack bar, and service centre. In fact the majority of tourism related businesses in Ontario will be faced with a minimum cost of $10,000 to comply, and ongoing costs of $2,000 - $4,000 per year in subsequent years.
This is the rock the hard place of regulation 170/03 will hit.
Many local businesses will be faced with two choices: ignore the water regulations or go out of business.
Between increasing costs for insurance and property taxes, a decrease in sales due to poor tourism last year, and the fact that more and more local people dont have the money to eat in restaurants, many establishments dont have the $10,000 they would need to comply with the regulation, even if they wanted to. And they dont want to comply.
It is not a lack of concern for public safety that makes them oppose the regulation; it is the regulation itself, treating all water systems in the province as identical, and making businesses that are blessed with good water pay exorbitant costs to prove their water is good, and then treat it anyway.
What should the government do? Scrap the regulations, hire their own crews to go around and evaluate the wells, take raw water samples, and determine what is needed in each and every case; and only then ask the townships, church congregations and businesses to fix problems that actually exist.
The Walkerton experience, which precipitated all the water regulations that have come forward, created a great need for the province to be seen to be taking responsibility for drinking water. What they have done is pass laws that put all the onus, and cost, on lower tier governments and individual citizens. Its time for the province to take real responsibility - to recognise risk exists in the world, and take reasonable measures to mitigate that risk. Forcing people to go out of business or flout provincial regulations is no solution at all.
Its clear that the Minister of the Environment, Leona Dombrowsky, knows regulation 170/03 will not work. But can she convince her cabinet colleagues to make the necessary changes, and find the money in the provincial budget to begin evaluating drinking water throughout rural Ontario?
