Mayor's Report - June 2011

On May 18^th the 2010 Annual Water Quality Report (Volume 1 and Volume 2) was presented to the Metro Vancouver Water Committee along with a PowerPoint Summary of the report. The annual report summarizes the information gathered through the various monitoring programs carried-out by the GVWD, and provides an assessment of drinking water quality relative to drinking water guidelines, highlights unusual occurrences, and discusses municipal monitoring results where relevant.

Monitoring by Metro Vancouver of the Source Water showed that the quality was good for all three source supplies (Capilano, Seymour & Coquitlam):

Water Treatment highlights can be summarized as follows:

Seymour–Capilano Filtration Plant (SCFP) – The SCFP went to full filtration on January 15^th, 2010, and operated successfully throughout 2010. The average turbidity of water leaving the Clearwells to enter the GVWD transmission system was 0.05 NTU and never more than 0.19 NTU in 2010. Aluminum levels were consistently below the operational guideline of 0.2 mg/L.

One of the most important benefits of the new SCFP facility is the effect of filtration on the rate of chlorine decay in the treated water which results in a significantly slower rate of chlorine decay due to the purity of the water (low chlorine demand):

As a result of filtered water having a very low chlorine demand, there are multiple benefits, such as:

In conclusion, the 2010 Annual Water Quality Report can be summarized as follows:

Filtration of Seymour water has resulted in significant changes in the quality of the delivered water:
-- Turbidity in the filtered water is not an issue;
-- The colour of the water is lower;
-- Significantly lower disinfection by-products; and
-- The staying-power of the added chlorine is much greater, with less chlorine needed to maintain a chlorine residual throughout the distribution system.

The "bottom line" is that Belcarra residents can look forward to obtaining the world's best quality drinking water from the Seymour–Capilano Filtration Plant when Belcarra's new water distribution system comes into service next year.

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