Ottawa Public Health defends decision to reduce water testing at beaches

Ottawa Public Health is defending its decision to reduce its testing of the city's beach water, amid criticism that doing so makes swimming riskier. 

Until this swimming season, OPH has tested beach water quality daily but announced last month it would reduce testing to once a week starting June 21 to align with provincial standards, following a review of its beach water monitoring program.

According to Matthew Ruf, the Safe Food and Water Program manager with OPH, the shift will allow swimmers to pay attention to other factors when determining if it's safe to take a dip.

"We want people to broaden that horizon and think about those things that we can prove that are well known in science, and impact water quality," said Ruf. 

Being aware of recent heavy rainfall, dead fish, algae and cloudy waters are all better indicators of water safety, he said.

Daily testing can offer misleading information, he said, because it takes at least a day for results to come back and bacteria levels in water can change within that time period.

"To have people focus in on a water result that's 24 hours old isn't real time information," said Ruf.

 'A huge step backwards': Ottawa Riverkeeper 

But Ottawa's Riverkeeper, Laura Reinsborough, said she's "deeply disappointed" by the change.

She said daily testing was the "gold standard" in the province and called the move by OPH "a huge step backwards" because it could put Ottawans at risk of exposure to E.coli and other bacteria.

"When you just look to give a visual survey of a beach, you don't know what the bacteria count is in the water," said Reinsborough. "And so right now our best information is the rough water quality testing. It takes a day, but it gives you that information as soon as it's possible to receive it."

She said her organization, a local non-profit which advocates for the sustainable use of the Ottawa River, looked at the last three years of water quality data for the designated beaches and found that scaling back to weekly testing would mean that 20 per cent of test results would be "false."

"That would mean either that beaches are closed on days when it would be safe to swim or that they're open on days when the test results would have shown that it was not safe for swimming that day," she said. 

'Informed decisions'

According to OPH, its beaches meet the water quality standard of under 200 E.coli parts per million nearly 85 per cent of the time, but when it is unsafe, Reinsborough says people need to know.

"It's all about informed decisions," she said. "Both from the public and the city to open and close beaches."

Earlier this week, Ottawa Riverkeeper launched a petition to reinstate daily tests, which Reinsborough said received about 400 signatures in less than than 48 hours.

"We're hopeful that they'll hear that daily testing really matters to be able to make those informed decisions," she said. 

"We need to build confidence in our city beaches that people know that it can be safe to swim in and showing the data and those test results is the best way to do it."