Rural N.L. towns struggling to pay mounting costs of clean drinking water

On any given day in Newfoundland and Labrador, there are about 200 boil-water advisories in place in rural communities and it's not only a problem of public health, but of the viability of small towns themselves.

Governments have known for decades the seriousness of the situation, but the problem persists, for several reasons, starting with cost.

"When we look at the boil-water orders from a lot of smaller towns, there's a cost of having your water. There's no two ways about it," said Rob Anstey, chair of Gander's public works committee and a former Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador board member.

Some orders last only a day or two, as towns carry out repairs or upgrades on their systems, while others have been in placeas far back as the 1980s for reasons ranging from installation costs to maintenance costs to having the expertise to run them.

"There's lots of towns out there who have the systems to provide good drinking water, but they have no one that knows how to operate these systems," said Anstey."And the other side of it is that buying chlorine costs a lot of money, so some towns can't afford the chlorine to go into them."

There's also the issue of accessing capital works money from the province. Only some applications are approved for each round of funding, so there are communities that have been waiting for years.

The small town of Westport, on the Baie Verte Peninsula, has been under a boil order since 1991, and still hasn't completed itswater system.

"We've been trying through the capital works program, trying to get the remainder of the system in," said Mayor Sadie Hewitt.

"When I got on council in 2015, we took the initiative to install a system at our town hall where people can have safe drinking water. So right now we have a filtered water system and people can get their drinking water there."

She says some people in her town use spring water, or just drink from the tap if they have trouble accessing the town's filtered water. Neither is consideredsafe.

She figures the water filter at the town hall willbe their permanent solution, because she's not sureWestport will ever be able to afford a properly maintained water system.

"I wish we could get water where we didn't have to use any other system except what comes through our pipes," she said. "There's nothing like having clean water, but it's pretty much far-fetched now with everything that's going on."

There have been some partial solutions over the years. The province has paid for public filtration systems in several communities, so people can bring their bottles and fill them with clean water.

Municipal Affairs Minister Derrick Bragg says a new provincial rulewill require to make drinking water the top priority.

They would have to address their boil water advisory before they would apply for any extra funding.- Derrick Bragg

"In the future, any town that's looking for funding through the province, through any cost-share arrangement, if they've been on a long-term boil water advisory, in the next round of applications, they would have to address their boil water advisory before they would apply for any extra funding," he said.

Bragg saidthe rule will apply to any place that has been under a boil-water orderfor longer than a year. Those communities won't get money for any other work until they fix their water problems, he said.

Ansteysays the best solution to the cost barrier is regionalization, which is an off-putting conceptin many rural communities.

"If we were in different regions or different areas, we could hire on maybe one or two people in a certain area that would go around and say, 'We will manage your water. You got the machine here, we know how to handle it,'" he said.

"And then we could maybe buy chlorine in bulk for everybody, which puts the cost down."

Bragg says he strongly supports sharing resources regionally, butprovincial legislation already exists to assign work like water treatment to regional service boards, whichwere established in 2012.

Right now, though, Bragg said those boards are underused and don't govern issues the law allows them to, including regional fire protection, wastewater treatment and ensuring people have clean drinking water.

Bragg says he's interested in giving the boards more ability to manage those services, but there are a couple of things in Bragg's way right now. With a Liberal leadership campaign and subsequent provincial election looming, he doesn't know how long he'll be in government.

• Newfoundland and Labrador communities with boil-water orders, sorted by date

More than health concerns

There's also the issue of wastewater treatment, which falls under federal law andis very expensive but mandatory, so wastewaterhas a higher priority than drinking water for many towns.

And it's not just a public health issue. Bragg says all the boil orders are bad for the economy in rural areas.

"When you have people visiting your town, if you have a B&B in your town, they will look and see what boil water advisories are there," he said. "So it scares off potential tourists."

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