Midwestern

Water Problems Continue For Dungannon Residents

The Reeve of Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh says the municipality has been given until 2019 to address the problem of arsenic levels in drinking was in Dungannon.

Ben Van Diepenbeek says arsenic levels are currently running between 9 and 11 parts per million. Acceptable levels were 25 parts per million until January of 2018 when the Province lowered that to ten parts per million, so they're right on the border.

“Originally it was 25 parts per million and as of January 1st, 2018, the Province lowered it down to ten parts per million, so we're running on the boarder, right on the boarder line so, so far they've granted us an extension till 2019.”

Van Diepenbeek says they've looked at a number of solutions but they're all very expensive.

He says filtration is one option but he says the filters would cost about 500-thousand dollars and then another 30-thousand dollars a year to operate them and there would be the additional cost of hauling the excess water away, saying “To put in filtration you've got to put in certain types of filters that do that, but the maintenance on these filters and the cost of operating it is around thirty-thousand a year, plus you have to haul the excess water away, you can't just dump it down a drain”.

He adds if the levels were significantly over acceptable limits they wouldn't have any choice but they're testing every two weeks and they're below acceptable levels about fifty per cent of the time, so they're continuing to monitor the water and hoping levels drop before 2019.

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