Explain the manganese, please

City’s avoidable brown water debacle yet to be properly addressed

Wayne Vernon

It’s no secret that Winnipeg’s water has always been a little murky. But, with the opening of the city’s new $300 million water treatment plant in 2009, the impression was that this problem would go away. What followed, however, was an increase in brown water complaints starting in 2010, and hitting an all-time high in 2013.

Dr. Eva Pip, a professor in University of Winnipeg’s Biology department, has studied everything about Winnipeg’s water for the past 40 years. She understood the problems with the water well before the city’s Water and Waste department seemed to catch on.

“We knew more than a year before it was announced that it was manganese and iron,” Pip explains. “This all seemed to have arisen after that water treatment plant came into operation in December 2009.

“It’s really surprising to me that they didn’t anticipate this problem, and now it will be quite a while before they work this out of the system.”

The discoloration is reportedly being caused by excessive amounts of manganese precipitating in the water as an unintended result of ferric chloride, a coagulant that was being used to treat the water.

According to the Winnipeg Water and Waste department, “until late 2009, the only water treatment we applied was disinfection (chlorine and ultraviolet light), and corrosion control (orthophosphate), due to the high quality of the water source.”

If it’s of such high quality, it begs the question why did we have to begin treating it with ferric chloride in the first place?

According to Pip, part of the answer lies in what’s continuing to be overlooked in the matter: the condition of Shoal Lake.

“When that water source opened almost 100 years ago, that was arguably one of the finest water sources in the world,” Pip claims. “We failed to protect that water at the source. We allowed cottage development, raw sewage, mining, mink farms, clear cutting. You name it – it all went in the water.”

The discolored water has been deemed safe for consumption through an investigation done by an independent company (CH2M Hill) contracted by the City of Winnipeg, and our city’s manganese and iron levels are below that which is considered harmful by the World Health Organization.

The Water and Waste department is currently working to remedy the excessive amount of manganese by looking for coagulants other than ferric chloride. “However, until they are fully tested on Winnipeg water, we will not know their feasibility in our conditions,” Alissa Clark, their communications officer reports.

Pip asserts that a disconnect remains. “The water that comes out of the treatment plant is very different in quality than what goes in,” she says.

This manganese problem took many people by surprise, given the assurances that the treatment plant would improve our water. As the Water and Waste department reports, it’s supposed to be “of a higher quality than the drinking water guidelines set out by Health Canada,” and it’s “clearer and smells and tastes better all year.”

So far, as many Winnipeggers can attest, that simply hasn’t been the case, leaving lingering questions about the water we consume everyday.

“Technically it won’t make you sick if you ingest it, but we really deserve to have clean water,” Pip points out. “This is a developed country, and that is supposed to be a first-rate treatment plant, and we shouldn’t be seeing this sort of problem with the amount of money that has been put into it.”

Published in Volume 68, Number 21 of The Uniter (February 19, 2014)

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