Walkerton Water Tragedy
In May of 2000 in a small, rural town known as Walkerton, a major tragedy struck. The water in the area was contaminated with E. ... Should this tragedy have been avoided? ... Part of the blame for this tragedy belongs on the shoulders of the Ontario government for failing to put proper safeguards into place after privatizing the water supply and for failing to make reporting of positive tests for contamination mandatory when water testing was privatized in 1996. ... A lot of the blame has to be placed on how the municipal government acted before this tragedy ever took place. ... There are a lot of steps the people operating at a local level could have and should have taken to avoid this terrible tragedy. Thanks to the municipal workers, these measures were not met and this unnecessary tragedy unfortunately occurred, Problems with water in the Walkerton area wasn’t exactly a new thing when the tragic events occurred in May of 2000. The Toronto Star reported that town officials were warned as early as 1983 that water in one of Walkerton’s wells was contaminated with agricultural runoff, which likely contained E. ... Walkerton had five positive tests for it in 1998, including four children at a day care centre. “People in Walkerton have been experiencing health problems for quite some time,” said lawyer Mark Poland of London#. Several months before the children became ill in 1998, Ontario’s environment ministry sent a local official with the provincial health ministry a report on Walkerton’s water. The report, noted that Walkerton’s water had been contaminated by bacteria for the past four years. The environment ministry suggested Walkerton use more chlorine to disinfect the water. Knowing the history that this agricultural town had with water and bacteria, the water managers should have done a better job monitoring the water and paid serious attention if they saw a problem with the water.