Media Clipping — Thursday, July 27, 2000, The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax

N.S. water threatened, report says.

By Davene Jeffrey / Staff Reporter

Nova Scotia's drinking water is improving, but its wetlands, rivers, lakes and coastal waters are in increasing jeopardy, a new study reports.

The 230-page study, being released today, shows a 3.2 percentage point improvement from 1987 to 1998 in the quality of municipal water samples that were free from coliform bacteria.

But more than one-third of Nova Scotians still don't trust their drinking water and spend an estimated $265 a year per household on bottled water and water filtration systems.

The water quality study is the latest report from GPI Atlantic Inc., a non-profit research group.

The group is building an index to measure well-being and sustainable development of society. It includes the economic contributions of family, community and natural habitat.

The province's water resources provide benefits worth $11 billion a year to Nova Scotians. Included in those benefits are drinking water, industrial water supply, recreation, waste treatment, food production, nutrient cycling, erosion control and other vital ecosystem services, the report says.

But the decline of the province's wetlands, rivers, lakes and coastal waters is causing hidden damage to the economy and threatens the well-being of future generations, report author Sara Wilson said Wednesday.

Freshwater wetlands provide natural and necessary water filtration systems, but due to development many of these are being destroyed, she said.

Freshwater wetlands and coastal wetlands also protect against erosion, she said.

The report estimates wetland loss costs the province $2.3 billion a year in lost ecological services.

Only 20 per cent of Nova Scotia's former salmon rivers still have healthy fish stocks and the number of brook trout caught in the province has dropped by half since 1985.

Nearly a quarter of Halifax-area lakes are "dying rapidly" because of high concentrations of phosphorus, nitrogen and other nutrients that come from fertilizer run-off, households, agriculture and forestry.

Bacteriological contamination has caused shellfish closures to double in the last 15 years, at an estimated cost of $8 million a year in lost revenues.

Ms. Wilson does have praise to offer the Environment Department and municipalities

"Their mandate is to maintain and protect these resources and they are fairly hard at work doing that, but also a lack of resources does not enable them to carry out their full mandate," she said.

The Environment Department's 2000-01 budget has been cut to $13.1 million from $15.6 million the previous year.

Those cuts make essential inspection, monitoring and enforcement more difficult, the report states.

"Our hope is that (the study) will enable better policy decisions," Ms. Wilson said.

Her report also includes 15 recommendations to the province, among them enforcing greater source control to reduce toxic discharges to harbours, rivers and lakes, and making investments in wetland restoration, watershed protection, sewage and water supply upgrades.

Nova Scotia's municipal water supplies were put under the microscope in September 1999 when tests in 56 communities found 18 had unacceptable levels of trihalomethane, a chemical produced when chlorine in treatment plants reacts with organic material in the raw water supply.

Dr. Jeff Scott, the province's chief medical examiner, has said long-term exposure to high levels of trihalomethane can increase the risk of developing bladder cancer by 15 per cent.

In a third round of testing in May, nine of 20 communities tested still had unacceptable levels of the chemical.

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