City of North Bay exploring options to remove forever chemicals from drinking water

The bluish Ontario metropolis of North Bay says it is exploring options to upgrade its h2o attraction works truthful it tin dainty per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly referred to arsenic everlastingly chemicals, though there's nary backing presently successful spot to bash that.

The metropolis has been remediating a tract astatine the Jack Garland Airport that was contaminated with PFAS from the aboriginal 1970s to the mid-1990s, when firefighters trained there using aqueous film-forming foams that incorporate PFAS.

The Department of National Defence has covered astir of the $20-million outgo to region and dainty contaminated ungraded from the site. To date, contractors person removed astir 23,000 tonnes of ungraded from the site, according to North Bay metropolis spokesperson Gord Young.

The adjacent signifier of the cleanup, expected to commencement successful aboriginal 2026, volition beryllium to adhd underground barriers to support h2o from seeping retired of the area.

But anterior to caller remediation efforts, PFAS seeped into groundwater and made its mode into Trout Lake, the root of North Bay's drinking water.

"We deliberation it's large that the metropolis and section and the national authorities is moving up with cleaning up the contaminated tract wherever the PFAS is coming from," said Liza Vandermeer, who lives successful North Bay and sits connected the committee of the Trout Lake Conservation Association.

"The interest we person is that determination are precise precocious levels of PFAS successful Trout Lake already and that PFAS is going consecutive into our municipal h2o supply. Our drinking water, which serves the City of North Bay, arsenic good arsenic each the radical who unrecorded connected Trout Lake who gully that water."

Canada is successful the process of adding PFAS to its database of toxic substances. Certain PFAS chemicals person been linked to issues with the kidneys, liver, immune strategy and thyroid problems.

On Aug. 9, 2024, Health Canada updated its nonsubjective worth for the sum attraction of 25 types of PFAS successful drinking h2o to 30 nanograms per litre. Measurements taken successful Trout Lake successful 2023 reached an mean of 56 nanograms per litre for 11 PFAS substances.

The measurements did adhere to Health Canada's recommendations astatine the time, which was for PFAS not to transcend 70 nanograms per litre — equivalent to astir 3.5 drops successful an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

A shared responsibility 

In an email to CBC News, Health Canada said making definite Canadians person entree to harmless drinking h2o is simply a shared work betwixt federal, provincial and municipal governments. 

"The day-to-day work of providing harmless drinking h2o to the nationalist mostly rests with the provinces and territories, portion municipalities usually oversee the day-to-day operations of the attraction facilities," the email added.

Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks spokesperson Lindsay Davidson said successful an email that astir provinces are successful the "initial stages of planning/conduction monitoring programs" astir Health Canada's caller PFAS recommendations.

Davidson added that if Ontario adopts Health Canada's caller standards "the ministry would expect the metropolis [North Bay] to supply a program of however they volition conscionable the revised objective, and past instrumentality that plan."

North Bay spokesperson Gord Young said imaginable attraction options would see granular activated c and an ion speech to region PFAS earlier it reaches people's taps.