Glass half full when it comes to Brandon’s water supply

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This article was published 08/04/2022 (1434 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Brandon’s water systems have a clean bill of health according to a recent report.

Last week, the city published its 2021 annual report for its public water supply.

The 15-page document talks about the process the municipal water treatment plant follows to prepare the water for safe consumption, lists the results of testing for potentially harmful substances, and outlines changes made to the system over the year and any incidents relating to the water supply.

The report isn’t just for the benefit of current stakeholders with an interest in the integrity of the water supply, water treatment plant manager Alan Howe said Friday, but also for future stakeholders like businesses and people who are considering moving into the city.

Howe started in his role in January last year but was previously an operator at the plant. When workers were sequestered at the facility in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was part of the first crew keeping operations going.

According to the report, the city’s water supply tested below the legally permissible levels for arsenic, benzene, ethylbenzene, fluoride, lead, nitrate, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, toluene, xylenes and uranium.

Howe said to test for these elements, the city takes two 11-litre samples — one directly from the Assiniboine River and one from a tap at the civic works department — and sends them to a laboratory in Winnipeg for testing.

The water also showed levels of haloacetic acids and trihalomethanes below legal limits. Both substances are sometimes created when chlorine used to disinfect drinking water interacts with organic matter and can be potentially harmful to humans.

“This last year, 2021, was probably the best year that we had for treating water for water quality,” Howe said. “That’s why we were under [the limit] for both the THM and HAAs, because we didn’t have a lot of the runoff. The river was fairly low and shallow, so we didn’t have a lot of the organics we’re used to seeing coming into our plant to treat.”

Despite increased runoff from snowfall and increased outflow from the Shellmouth Reservoir, which ends up in the Assiniboine River, Howe believes the water level will be around the same this year.

There were two incidents where the turbidity of the water supply — referring to the clarity of a liquid — leaving filters at the water treatment plant was too high, but both issues were solved in around five minutes.

During spring runoff, Howe said, water being drawn into the city’s service gets very soft and hard to treat, which can lead to extra turbidity.

One way of combating water softness is by drawing water from the city’s active backup well located near the skating oval. There’s another well near Turtle Crossing, but it was damaged from flooding and is expected to be repaired.

Last year, the city drew water from its backup well for 21 days in April and 15 days in December.

After receiving funding, the city will be replacing all 16 of the filter beds at its water treatment plant and adding an air scour system by 2025, which will improve performance even more in that regard.

When it comes to lead, the water service was within legal guidelines, but the city acknowledges in the report lead levels are higher in water samples drawn from residences that have lead in their services connections.

Of the 37 samples taken from residences in random daytime tests, 19 per cent were found to have lead levels above the limit of 0.005 milligrams per litre. When a sample was drawn after a five-minute flush, the percentage of tests with higher than allowable lead levels dropped to 14 per cent.

This is the first year the city has done this kind of test. Howe said it was done to raise awareness on the issue and promote the city’s program offering a rebate of up to $100 to residents who install a lead filter on their water service.

More information on that program can be found online at brandon.ca/watertreatment/lead-water-services-information.

In 2021, 17 boil water advisories were issued to homes when work was being done on nearby water mains. However, bacteriological tests were within limits after work was completed and no charges or warnings were issued on the water supply during the year.

The city’s five-year licence to draw water from the Assiniboine ends this year but Howe doesn’t believe there will be any obstacles to getting it renewed.

He said representatives from the province and the city will be meeting next week to discuss Brandon’s water needs going forward.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

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