Still haven’t learned our water-quality lesson after Walkerton disaster

Four charges have been laid against a former Town of Oyen public works employee, Darcy Dobrosky, related to his duties as a water and wastewater operator, the province announced this week.

The charges relate to events between April 1, 2009 and March 8, 2016. The first court appearance is scheduled for next week in Hanna Provincial Court.

The charges include knowingly providing false or misleading information and failing to monitor potable water in a waterworks system at random locations within the water distribution system.

That the people of Oyen were potentially put at great risk as a result of the alleged failings of this person is nothing short of shocking.

It was May 13, 2000 in Walkerton, Ont. (a community of 5,000 people at the time), that numerous people began getting ill with bloody diarrhea. For days the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission said the water was not the issue even though it later emerged it was in possession of lab tests showing contamination. In the end five people died and about 2,500 had become ill. Some people have had to endure lifelong effects from the illnesses.

Stan and Frank Koebel were part of the criminal investigation and admitted to falsifying reports. In 2004 one received a year’s jail sentence, the other nine months house arrest.

“No provincial government politician was charged or found guilty of wrongdoing,” according to Wikipedia.

A report found there had been a series of failures including improper operating practices and that operators knew some practices were unacceptable and against guidelines and directives.

A total of 93 recommendations were made. It was believed these would influence provincial policies across the entire country. Apparently not enough. Nearly 6,000 people in North Battleford, Sask., were affected by a similar outbreak in 2001.

As far as we know the people of Oyen did not get ill but you have to wonder how close it came to that and what in the end revealed the failings that could have been catastrophic.

Everyone makes mistakes and it is therefore so important to have systems in place to catch errors and deliberate falsifications too. The fact that the Oyen situation continued for seven years may indicate that there were not. Details of the Oyen situation are still to be revealed in court but we should also be asking who was in charge in Oyen. Who was overseeing the person doing the testing and are they also being held accountable?

It is a crying shame we have not learned from failings in other jurisdictions. The families affected in Walkerton must be shaking their heads.

(Gillian Slade is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions, email her at gslade@medicinehatnews.com or call her at 403-5288635.)