Presiding Janet Canavan

 

Guests:  Mana Sawamori
   Anel Neuman
   Sean Tompkins - outbound Student
   Bob Edmonston - Guest Speaker
   Glenn Powell

 

Peter Thoem related the events of the most recent board meeting. He mused that in the past, meetings used to be fairly rowdy, there would be a fair bit of muddling through, but ultimately it would get done, and invariably, with the help of one or two cases of beer. Nowadays it appears that the meetings are still  quite rowdy, there is a fair bit of muddling through, and usually get things done, but unfortunately, they lost the booze.

 

He was pleased to announced that the final payment was made to the Hospital Foundation for the rebuild. Burlington Central's overall contribution was $300,000.

 

 

Poinsettias sales, under the able leadership of Andrew Gaydon, with huge help from a number of deliverers, netted $28,104. Ron Lambert's team were the winners for the number of poinsettias sold.

 

The MOB cluster is a group formed of three cities’ clubs: Milton, Oakville, Burlington who joined to pull together for international projects with pooling of financial resources. There is a clean water project in Bolivia; our recent exchange student Abraham is back at home in Peru and one of the international projects is to support Abraham in his upcoming university years where he will be studying civil engineering.

 

Robert Martin is in charge of the children's Christmas party and anticipates a good turnout. Anyone who would like to come is requested to give names and numbers to Robert as soon as possible. The party is this coming Thursday and as usual Santa will be accompanied by one elf.

 

Gerry Willard presented an upcoming Career Coach conference, a vocational project for youth with women and men as career coaches. There will be two separate sessions at the Burlington Convention Centre for the men on April 25, and for the women on March 21. Look at HIEC.on.ca for more details.

 

The Rotary Club of Burlington Central is sponsoring the Festival of Lights this year. They're hoping to become long-term sponsors and perhaps to have a lit Rotary Wheel.

 

The club was delighted to see Abraham via Skype, safely back at home. Regrettably the transmission was very intermittent and the scribe missed much of it. He described his debriefing session in Lima after what he described as his phenomenal year. To get back home to his island took 28 hours from Lima plus a two hour boat ride to the island. It was an emotional return to his family and friends, a super tired but very happy boy. Abraham’s parents were eternally grateful for what was done for Abraham during his stay here and for the evidently great affection with which he was received.

 

He will be going for pre-University to Lima and ultimately will go to university for civil engineering where he's been accepted into a private university. A number of members of the club have already stepped forward to contribute to his University tuition which will be seven or eight thousand US dollars per year. Anyone wishing to contribute to this fund is asked to speak with Owen McElhinney.

 

Mana addressed the club briefly describing her 4 Rotary club meetings this week! The plan is to go to as many as possible of Rotary clubs in the district; if I'm not mistaken 100 was her goal! Mana loves Christmas!

 

Anel was happy with the recent school play Spamalot and delighted to be propelled into the mood for Christmas by a party at the North club as well as our Christmas party. She thanked Dave Beckett for his generosity in sending our students to Toronto by limousine to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

 

Andrew Gaydon was thanked warmly by Janet Canavan for his work on the poinsettias, a complex process that went off flawlessly.

 

The Sgt. at Arms, Mae Radford auctioned some baking done specifically for this event by number of kind members. Unfortunately David Dean is back in hospital after quite a run of good health following his major surgical  problems but it's expected he will get out before long. David's wife has usually provided baking for this event but was unable to this year.

 

Rod Collard hard was our Rotarian of the Week and the scribe doesn't have enough ink to relate all of the amazing things that he has done, and continues to do for this club.

 

Today's speaker was Bob Edmonston who came with Glenn Powell to talk about drinking water Source Protection for the region.

 

 

Most of us take drinking water for granted. The scribe recently learned that some 40% of Canadian homes don't even have the water metered, and pay a flat rate. There is clearly no incentive to conserve water and even those who pay by the litre are receiving it as a ludicrously low rate. Consider that the cost per person to regulate and supervise the protection and production of drinking water is around $175 per year that we are not paying at this point, and that sum is commonly paid monthly by people for their cable services. It's clearly time to reconsider the way water is distributed.

 

Bob came to tell us about how the water sources are protected. He reminded us that Walkerton was a catastrophe in which seven people died and thousands were very severely affected with a good many still suffering the chronic effects of the disease process that came from the pathogenic E. coli that was allowed to seep into the water system in Walkerton. This was not the only place to have had such a problem. Orangeville has had a Campylobacter problem. Other organisms are Cryptosporidium and lately, blue-green algae, which is in fact a bacterium that produces a toxin called microcystin; this has been a major problem in recent years especially in shallow warm lakes like Erie. With this "algae" it cannot even be boiled to drink because boiling releases the toxins requiring that water be brought into the communities so affected.

 

In 2000 in Walkerton the problem was one of agricultural runoff exacerbated by heavy rains. It was already known that there was a problem in 1978. On May 20 May 12, 2000 a 70 mm rain cause flooding and overflowing into the wells. A ‘boiled water advisory’ was only put out on May 21 even though it was clearly known to be a problem by May 15. No reaction from the authorities led to catastrophic illness. Seven died, 2300 became ill. The costs were around $150 million.

 

There was an inquiry that led to 221 recommendations for multiple barriers protecting the source of water. Source protection is one approach, management of consumption is another. Only 1% goes back to replenish the Great Lakes each year so care not to over-drain is critical. This is an shared responsibility between municipalities and individuals both corporate and individual. The Clean Water Act 2006 led to source protection committees. Even then private water sources and wells and community wells such as one might find at campsites and parks are not even covered by this. There are four major water intakes from Lake Ontario and eight wells scattered around the region. Each well has what is known as a WHPA, the water head protection area around the well, which is intensely monitored.

1 L of gasoline or oil will affect up to 1 million L of groundwater. Wells are at great risk of contamination, far more so than the intakes from the lake. There are many threats the greatest of which are sewage, then oil, then fuel handling, and then livestock.

 

Bill 66 as a major concern as it looks as though it might undermine the water protection bylaws that have been set up. The idea of the Open for Business by law was to create jobs but at this point it looks as though that might be as a very considerable cost if our water is put at risk by a cavalier approach to our greatest asset.  Remember that Clean Water and Vaccines are the principle reasons that we can call ourselves a “first world” country.  Land-use planning must not be allowed to override source protection.

 

Anthony Ford-Jones