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Health board wants deeper dive into water testing at Ottawa's beaches
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Ottawa's interim medical officer of health says his department may have misstepped in its public communication of a plan to test the water at the city's beaches weekly instead of daily.
Dr. Trevor Arnason's comments came during Monday's meeting of Ottawa's Board of Health where he faced questions from members about the reduced testing schedule, which is set to begin this weekend. The decision has drawn criticism from the Ottawa Riverkeeper who launched a petition last week opposing the reduction.
"[The Riverkeeper has] done a large amount of work in this area around Ottawa for many years," Arnason told the board. "And we probably should have engaged them much, much earlier on around their views on the testing."
Arnason said Ottawa Public Health (OPH) has since been in touch with the Riverkeeper.
"They offered some really good suggestions on how to improve our messaging, and pointed out that some of our messaging may not be resonating in the public in the way that we intended," Arnason said.
Standing by weekly testing
Still, Arnason said he stands by the decision to test for E. coli weekly rather than daily, because the results take time to process.
"When people are looking at the testing result for today, that's the result from yesterday," Arnason said. "That one measure of yesterday's water quality doesn't tell you what today's water quality is, [and] doesn't tell you about other safety issues that you encounter at the beach."
Board member Brent Bauer said his swimming club, the Ottawa Rideau Speedeaus, often uses the city's lakes and rivers in the summer and pays close attention to the daily reports, despite their limitations.
"We use them as [an] approximate guide for the water quality of the day that we intend to swim, and in full knowledge that weather conditions can increase the risk if there's a heavy rainfall, for example," Bauer said.
Arnason also said he doesn't believe the reduction to weekly testing will lead to significant cost savings for the city.
Bauer said he feels OPH is downloading responsibility onto residents by encouraging them to carry out visual inspections for potential problems such as dead fish and algae blooms, which could affect water quality.
"These might not be helpful messages," Arnason acknowledged, adding that the public communication was discussed in OPH's discussion with the Ottawa Riverkeeper.
"They might not resonate with people, and they might seem to indicate that we're putting more pressure on them to evaluate things that they don't fully know how to do," Arnason said.
He said the intention was to reduce the public's reliance on E. coli reports alone as a measure of safety, and emphasized the importance of other advice such as drowning prevention.
Risk assessment, additional testing
During the meeting, Bauer submitted a motion to request that OPH conduct a comparative analysis of daily versus weekly testing, in collaboration with the Ottawa Riverkeeper, and report back to the board in the fall.
Coun. Rawlson King said he understands OPH's rationale for shifting to weekly testing, which brings the city in line with provincial standards, but asked if it would consider doing additional testing during periods of heavy rain or sewage overflows.
"Those types of things we could look at a little bit more," Arnason said.
