The Ontario Clean Water Agency's operation of the Saugeen Shores drinking water system improved in 2017, but at least one councillor is not impressed.
A Ministry of Environment and Climate Change inspection from October reported four issues of non-compliance, an improvement of the seven non-compliance orders issued in 2016.
OCWA Vice President of Operations Richard Junkin says the report is clear there's no issue with the quality of the water being supplied in Saugeen Shores, adding the issues are related to record keeping.
"It's actually stated in the body of the report that there's no questions about the quality of the drinking water," says Junkin. "There were some administrative deficiencies in logbook journal entries and some details that were not provided to the level of satisfaction of the inspector."
Councillor Neil Menage says the bulk of the findings in 2016 mirror that of 2017, as non-compliance related to record-keeping was reported in consecutive inspections.
He worries it's the start of a trend in the wrong direction.
"You can clearly end up with a culture that's accepting of non-standard, non-validation, non-verification performance that doesn't meet that high standard," says Menage. "So if it creeps into logbooks and it creeps into some other inspections, where else could it creep into?"
Overall, the inspection rating improved from 89% to 96% in 2017, and Junkin says OCWA has submitted plans to fix the issues in their record keeping practices, adding they will strive to improve to 100% this year.
