Verner water problem is NOT municipality's fault
Verner water problem is NOT municipality's fault
Municipal memo states that discoloured water is a result of individual household plumbing problems.
"Problem is not with the Municipal Water System…” - West Nipissing’s Director of Infrastructure
On Tuesday, council will receive a long awaited update on the Verner water problem however local residents may not appreciate the response they will hear.
In the agenda (page 63), the city’s Director of Infrastructure, Elizabeth Henning, presents the status of the issue.
She notes that the Municipality has been undergoing thrice weekly sampling at 6 homes. The intention of this thrice weekly sampling is to test homes who were frequent reporters of discoloured water.
The city asserts that “As of now the testing has not resulted in any cases of discoloured water.” The Director further adds that over the last 5 years less than 5% of homes have filed formal complaints regarding discoloured water.
“Our findings are that when discoloured water occurs it clears when the tap is run for one minute. This indicates that the problem is not with the Municipal Water System but that there is likely build up in the resident’s hot water tank or plumbing.” - West Nipissing Director of Infrastructure
In a shocking claim, Henning then alleges that the discolored water problem has nothing to do with manganese in city water lines as previously admitted by the city since 2019. The municipality now believes that this problem is strictly related to residents’ hot water tanks or plumbing.
When this problem first emerged in 2019, city officials did not deny that the problem was related to to the source. They admitted that the high manganese levels were always there but previously controlled by using chlorine dioxide. However this chemical has since been deemed carcinogenic so the city has stopped using it. Which has resulted in periodic summer discolouration for many residents in Verner.
The Manager of Water & Sewer, Peter Ming directly addressed this issue earlier this year. He admitted that the manganese problem gets worse in warmer weather. He went on to share that Verner regularly sees alarming manganese levels of “well above 1200 micrograms per litre”, 10x the acceptable level now set by Health Canada.
Problem likely related to city plumbing, not homeowner plumbing
I’ve spoken to many who are knowledgeable on this subject and the working theory as to why the discolouration only affects some homes and not others in the village is not because the individual homes have poor plumbing. The hypothesis is that while the city works hard to try and eliminate as much manganese as it can from the water supply, it sometimes builds up at certain areas in the villages plumbing corridor depending on slopes and distances. When large bursts occur, built-up manganese flows to certain houses creating discoloured water.
Many houses don’t experience this as they are situated far from a problem spot in the water line. However there are many cases of newer houses experiencing discoloured water, so the Director’s assertion that it is related to individual plumbing may be inappropriate.
Regardless of how many houses visually see the discolouration, there is still the long-term problem of having dangerously high manganese levels in a drinking water source.
No progress on long-term plan
While the city now appears to indicate that the Verner problem is strictly an individual plumbing problem, they do still plan on connecting the water supply to Sturgeon. In her August 2nd memo, the Director or Infrastructure ends by stating that the costs to eventually connect Verner to the Sturgeon water supply is expected to cost upwards of $10M and that the municipality continues to watch for grant opportunities in order to bring the project forward.
This seems like a costly endeavor, if the problems are not associated to the municipal water system.
This update is likely not going to put Verner residents at ease. Many have been dealing with discoloured water for years with a promised solution more than 5 years ago. Now the problem is being downplayed and blamed on homeowners themselves with no end in sight.
The meeting is on August 13th at 6:30PM in council chambers. It can be watched live on Youtube.
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Let’s make this clear I don’t have a hot water tank
Great read.
I agree about the dips in pipe. Having installed and removed older watermains, it’s not uncommon to pull out an old pipe and have 2-6” of gunk build in pipes.
When water main is installed, the height of the pipe is usually determined by the height of the road. 1.8-2.2m down (depending on the area) for frost coverage. It’s also normal for water main to plunge deeper in order to have proper separation from sewer and storm mains as well.
That said, when the road has dips, even slight dips in which verner does have, so does the water main.
As for the dips for separation of other mains, only the city would know by looking through their
“As-Builts” or maps.
I’d bet the brown water is worse in the areas with a slight dip in the road anyways.