Some say the tap water in rural Saskatchewan is perfectly fine. Indeed, one government official termed a bitter tasting water in one town as “delicious”.

There is one rule that is dominating private industry right now. It is the requirement for innovative product development.

The E. coli outbreak in Walkerton sent a wake-up call across Canada. Among rural residents, it instilled fear that the water their family is drinking may not be safe.

During the past two years we have documented the concerns with rural drinking water in almost every issue of The Rural Councillor.

During a public address in October 1999 Saskatchewan’s Premier Mr. Roy Romanow made the following statement: “Here in Saskatchewan we have always placed a high priority on meeting the challenges of adequate water and wastewater systems to our citizens, urban and rural alike.”

The provincial government in Saskatchewan both through its elected representatives and through its senior civil servants have tripped over each other to deny the obvious: that rural Saskatchewan has problems making high quality drinking water out of poor quality source waters.

PFRA commissioned a report with the above title. I wrote the report in collaboration with PFRA. Strategic funding was provided by the Canada-Saskatchewan Agri-Food Innovation Fund (Canada-Saskatchewan) and WateResearch Corp.

Saskatchewan Environment and Resource Management (SERM) puts together a weekly list of boil water orders and boil water advisories.

On September 24 I had lunch with Dr. David Horrobin, a true innovator in Stirling, Scotland. Dr. David Horrobin was formerly CEO of Scotia Pharmaceuticals, a major British drug development company with one major research facility in Canada.

Sixty years ago, in an effort to increase available water supplies on the Canadian prairies, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency (PFRA) implemented a dugout construction program.

To determine if a water is safe for human consumption in rural areas it is common practice to measure two things, the amount of nitrates and total coliform bacteria in the water.

Contaminants in the environment can affect how long a person will live and what illnesses that person will suffer.

A national meeting of the Canadian Institute of Public Health Inspectors was held May 10-12 in Saskatoon.

As the temperature rises and the sun gets hot crops such as alfalfa, become green. This is because the plant pigment chlorophyll is present.

The definition of quality drinking water is universal: Drinking water should be clear, colourless and odourless. It should not contain disease-causing microorganisms (pathogens) or harmful chemicals.

The notion that only pure water is good for us is wrong. Most water contains basic elements, such as minerals, which are actually good for us.

When the drinking water in Saskatoon has even the slightest taste and odour city people phone and bitterly complain to the Water Treatment Plant.

The Saskatchewan Government formed a working group to address water issues in 1994 and in 1998 they produced a booklet for public input.

Rural water users around the world have two sources of water: surface water (dugouts, lakes and rivers) and ground water (well water).

Safe drinking water has been on Hans Peterson’s mind for 10 years. Hans is the Principal Research Scientist with the Saskatchewan Research Council and in the spring of 1987 he started a project called “Algae in dugouts”.