The water supply systems in both Drayton and Moorefield fared well in the recent Inspection Report Rating (IRR) filed by the Ministry of the Environment.
The memorandum, dated Jan. 7, is basically a report card documenting incidents of non-compliance during annual MOE inspections of municipal water systems.
Inspection categories include capacity assessment, treatment processes, operation manuals, water quality monitoring, reporting and corrective action, and other findings.
In Drayton, the final inspection rating for the 2006-07 reporting year was 89.7%. In the previous reporting year, the Drayton system scored 100%, which is the goal for all regulated drinking water systems in Ontario.
A poor grade in water quality monitoring – just a 68% compliance rating – was the cause of the lower overall score. In total there were eight issues of non-compliance in the Drayton inspection on Jan. 17 of last year, all in the monitoring section of the report.
“The issue affecting the lower rating here was water quality monitoring and it was subsequently corrected by Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA),” Public Works Director Larry Lynch told council last week.
In Moorefield, the overall ratings during two separate inspections were higher, at 97.2% on Nov. 21 in 2006, and 96% on Aug. 8 of last year.
Because its water system is newer, there is no IRR for Moorefield for the previous reporting year.
During the most recent inspection in Moorefield, there were three issues of non-compliance in the water quality monitoring section of the report.
There were also three issues of non-compliance in the operations manuals section and four in the log book section.
According to Lynch, the failure of staff to correctly fill out log books has been addressed in the form of a letter to all department staff in December from township clerk Patty Sinnamon. And a copy of the standard operating procedures for log books, as prepared by OCWA, has been presented to staff.
But overall, Lynch was happy with the report from the MOE.
“The message is we are doing a very good job,” he said.
