A new provincial audit has raised concerns about the oversight of non-municipal drinking water systems in Ontario, revealing gaps in inspections, enforcement, and testing that could pose health risks to millions of residents.
While more than 98% of samples tested from non-municipal drinking water systems over the past decade have met Ontario standards, the audit report has a series of recommendations for small drinking water systems and private wells where testing may be infrequent and not part of that 98%.
The audit report contains 17 recommendations from the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, which highlights that the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) lacks capacity to regularly inspect all 1,816 non-municipal systems in the province that serve some 3 million Ontario residents, mostly in rural and remote areas.
By the end of the 2023-24 inspection cycle, about 34% of non-municipal water systems have not been inspected in five years or more; and 9% have not been inspected for more than seven years, the audit found.
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“A lack of testing can expose Ontarians to risks,” says Ontario Auditor General Shelley Spence in a special report tabled in the Legislature on March 31.
When it comes to small drinking water systems, such as a hotel, restaurant or church, the audit found that public health units did not have effective means to inspect systems that have not properly self-reported.
Public health units are required to inspect low to moderate risk systems at least once every four years, and high-risk systems at least once every two years. However, the audit found that 52% of the 33 health units that have small drinking water systems in their region, didn’t inspect all systems as required, with some units noting inspection backlogs dating back more than five years. Twelve of the health units noted inspection backlogs attributed to staffing and resource challenges.
More than half (932) of the drinking water systems regulated by local health units had missed at least one sample in the last five years, the audit found. Additionally, 20% of those had missed an entire year of samples and 5% had missed multiple years.
Of the 932 non-compliant systems, health units issued fines to only 11 of them.
“A lack of enforcement of water testing could lead to risks for water safety,” states the audit report.
Almost all local health units told the audit staff that they had issues with the national certification process for assessing small drinking water systems, noting that the inspection staff felt inadequately prepared to assess risks.
Over the past five years, 20 local health units have also found approximately 260 unregistered small drinking water systems that did not notify officials of their existence before starting operation of their systems, the report states.
Spence’s audit report recommends that public health units work with the Ministry of Health to assess the extent of and reasons for inspection backlogs, including resources and costs. Additionally, Spence’s team recommends the development of strategies to ensure that local health units can deliver on responsibilities to inspect small drinking water systems at the required frequency.
The report also addresses what it calls a lack of guidance from the Ministry of Health regarding short-term rentals booked through online platforms and whether they are to be considered public facilities regulated by local health units.
“Because of this, visitors to short-term rentals may drink or cook with water from an unregulated water supply that may or may not have been tested by the owner, thus creating a potential health risk,” states the report.
Notably, the audit report also found that 34% of systems regulated by MECP had not been inspected in more than five years. After MECP expanded the workloads of its compliance officers to include additional responsibilities, such as inspecting municipal sewage and stormwater systems, the number of inspections declined 45% between 2012 and 2020.
