by Colin Perkel
Stan’s domestic waters calmed with his eventual remarriage to Carole, although it did mean having to disavow the Roman Catholic Church of his immediate family. At Trinity Lutheran, a short walk down the road from their home on Yonge Street, Stan and Carole found a safe religious refuge. But his life in the secular world felt more and more like a Wall Street rat race. On top of everything else, he and Carole took over the cleaning contract at the PUC offices, arriving at the crack of dawn a couple of times a week to clean the place. Perhaps he was reacting to the uncertainties of his future job prospects by trying to run harder. Perhaps he figured he could impress the new mayor and council with both his diligence and competence. Perhaps he was simply trying to run from his own self-doubts. He began to feel as if he was sinking. And he was.
Gathering Clouds
THE NEW MILLENNIUM brought little respite for Stan Koebel. There were several major construction and maintenance projects set to go, but Greg Diebold had quit, Al Buckle was on sick leave with carpal tunnel syndrome, and Bob McKay had hurt his knee. Tim Hawkins was back, but Stan continued to harbour doubts about his ability to function as lineman. Topping it all, council was still dithering about what to do with the waterworks, although it now seemed to be leaning away from leaving them with the PUC. Without telling Stan, council retained a consulting engineer. It also started billing customers directly for certain charges, again without telling him. Stan felt left out of the loop, as if he were losing control, and the persistent spring rains weren’t helping his mood.
“I’m supposed to be in charge,” he complained to Carole. “It doesn’t seem fair they’re billing the customers for the water and collecting money the PUC needs.”
He made the same complaint to the PUC chairman, but there didn’t seem much Jim Kieffer could do other than advise Stan to hang in there. Council, ultimately, was in charge and would make the decision. So Stan ran harder, from hydro meeting to hydro meeting, from project to project. And still events conspired to catch him off guard. One such event was the decision by the private laboratory that had long tested Walkerton’s water to get out of the business.
GAP EnviroMicrobial Services had come into being after its owner fell victim to the axe wielded by the Conservative government. For twenty-six years, Gary Palmateer had worked in the ministry labs that did the water testing before the province decided to shut them down in 1996 and turn the system over to the private sector. In Walkerton’s case, that made for a relatively smooth transition because GAP knew exactly what was required. Although the reporting guidelines were never updated to reflect the privatization of the laboratories – much to the consternation of senior Environment and Health Ministry officials – Palmateer nevertheless followed the rules that had applied to the public labs. Whenever he came across bad water samples from Walkerton, which he did on a dozen occasions, he notified the PUC as well as the ministry office in Owen Sound, which in turn was supposed to let the medical officer of health know. But the lab to which Stan Koebel turned when GAP closed in spring 2000 had no such history. Although A&L Canada Laboratories East, a U.S.-based franchise operation, had never tested for bacteria and was not accredited to do so, it nevertheless accepted water samples from Walkerton. In the absence of updated guidelines or regulations the provincial government felt no need to implement, A&L followed private industry practice in deeming test results to be confidential, to be shared only with the client. It certainly never occurred to Stan to discuss the notification protocol with A&L in the event bad water turned up. He simply assumed the company would tell the ministry, as GAP had always done. As recently as April 2000, after GAP passed bad results on to them, Larry Struthers of the Environment Ministry’s Owen Sound office spoke to Stan about the problem, but he neither followed up nor passed along the information to the medical officer of health.
A day after the unsettling phone call from Struthers, the PUC auditor raised the issue that Stan had racked up 99.5 unused vacation days. The credits had been accumulating over the previous decade, but had really shot up over the last few years. Although entitled to six weeks holidays a year, Stan typically took only one or two. What with the meetings and trying to attend various courses or conferences, he felt guilty about taking off again. He never did get to take that vacation.
—
If a well sits idle for too long, the volume of water it yields can decrease. So Stan took the town’s main well out of service and fired up Wells 5 and 6 to ensure their aquifers stayed open and clean. But he also had another reason to run Well 5, which had been put in service in 1979 as a temporary source. Unlike Wells 6 and 7, which were farther out of town and on a different power grid, Well 5 used PUC-supplied power. That meant it generated revenue for the utility as it pumped water. Stan figured that was pretty smart. He left it that way for eight weeks until May 2, when he changed the computer-operated cycle to put Well 7 back in service as the primary well, with Well 5 and then 6 kicking in as backups in that sequence. Stan was anxious for Frank to get the new chlorinator installed at Well 7. The old one had really been acting up, and the new one had been sitting in its box at the pumphouse now for almost eighteen months, “partly installed” is how he put it in his monthly manager’s reports to the utilities commissioners.
“It’d be nice to get ’er in,” he said to Frank yet again.
—
Early on the morning of May 3, 2000, Frank sent Al Buckle and Bob McKay out to Well 7 and told them to wait for him. Around 7:40 A.M., Frank arrived and told them to take the chlorinator out. Frank pulled the main disconnect to the power supply for the pump and Buckle proceeded to hacksaw through one of the plastic pipes. Within a few hours, they had taken the chlorinator, but not the well, out of service. Given that the installation should only have taken a few days, neither brother considered it much of a problem that the town’s main well was pumping raw water.
—
April had been a wet month, with heavy rain on the 20 and 21. But the rainy weather had given way to more than a week of glorious sunshine and unseasonably high temperatures, affording farmers a great opportunity to get onto the land. Across the fence from Well 5, Dave Biesenthal had taken advantage of the perfect days to spread the manure that had been accumulating over the winter from his cow-calf operation on the fields, plough it into the ground, and get his corn planted. In and around town, bare legs and arms emerged from a winter of hibernation, as coats and sweaters drifted toward the back of closets. Mothers pushed their strollers at a leisurely pace, kids on bicycles took to the streets, and students sat on benches and munched their doughnuts as they caught a few rays. Everywhere, people greeted one another with “Beautiful day, eh?” All seemed right in the world. Although still technically weeks away, it felt as if summer had already arrived. The light showers that had fallen May 1 before giving way to another week of warm, sunny days only added to the mood of optimism in both country and town. Even Stan Koebel was feeling a little better about life, busy as it was. He’d sent off the weekly Monday samples to the new lab, and although A&L had some funny ideas about how to fill out the submission sheets and the amount of water they needed to do the tests he wanted, it didn’t seem like anything that couldn’t be sorted out later. After all, the old lab had always known what to do. Stan was also looking forward to a waterworks association conference in Windsor. While it would take him away from Walkerton, it would also be a respite from the day-to-day pressures. Janice would take care of the office. Frank could look after the outside work, especially the big water main construction project out by the corner of Highways 4 and 9 on the south end of town. But the great weather couldn’t last.
—
The early-morning rain was heavy on Monday, May 8, when Stan reached Frank at the shop.
“How are things going? With the highway job?” he asked.
“They haven’t got good sample results yet,” Frank replied. “Oh yeah. I didn’t want to tell you this over the phone, but Steve lost his licence again, got picked up by the cops…for im
paired.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to deal with it when I get home.”
“Yeah, and Bob’s going in for knee surgery tomorrow.”
That took Stan by surprise. He knew McKay had twisted his knee climbing a snow-covered slope at work in January, causing a pop that made both Lorley and Hawkins take notice. Although he’d hurt it again a month later, it seemed to be doing better, and Stan had been under the impression McKay’s therapy was working. Oh, well. Frank could figure it all out. But Frank was having trouble figuring it out. He hadn’t gotten around to installing the new chlorinator at Well 7, which had been pumping raw water into the system now for five days. In the wee hours of the next morning, Well 7 shut down altogether. Well 5, with its long history of bacterial contamination, took over. Well 6, with its relatively new chlorinator, didn’t kick in, possibly due to a lightning strike. Throughout the town’s water system, chlorine levels fell lower and lower. With Stan away, and so much else to do, no one was paying much attention.
At the waterworks conference in Windsor that day, rookie Environment Minister Dan Newman delivered a glowing report on the state of Ontario’s water. He made no mention of the billions of dollars needed to upgrade the province’s ailing water and sewage system. He did not mention the deep budget and staffing cuts to his ministry or the confusion created by the hasty dismantling of the public laboratories that used to test municipal water. He didn’t mention the problems the changes had created as to how bad results were reported or the fact his ministry knew many small towns were not treating or testing their water properly to save money. He did not mention that several senior officials in his ministry had been sounding the alarm for years.
“Ontario’s drinking water is second to none,” he boasted from the podium, adding that the PUC managers were to be congratulated for delivering “safe, reliable water.”
The PUC managers weren’t buying. After Newman left, they passed a resolution demanding the province return to its role as guardian of the province’s water, not unlike the one Walkerton’s council had passed two years earlier and sent to Premier Mike Harris, to no avail.
At A&L labs, the weekly samples taken that Monday arrived from Walkerton. Robert Deakin wasn’t happy. The labels on the bottles didn’t match the submission forms, which was on GAP letterhead. Nor had they sent enough water, an issue Deakin had discussed with Stan. He called the PUC, only to be told the manager was away. When he insisted on talking to the next guy in charge, Frank called him back. Deakin tried to explain the problems: there were no samples from Well 5, the forms weren’t filled in properly, and they hadn’t sent enough water. Frank didn’t have a clue what he was on about.
“Just proceed with what you have,” he said.
Outside, the rain continued to fall, as it did almost non-stop for the rest of the workweek. But on the Friday night, the violent collision of atmospheric warm and cold fronts spawned savage thunderstorms and it really began to pour. At the local arena, Frank helped out with a night of well-attended fun in which the town’s volunteer firefighters put on a show impersonating the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls, much to the delight of the families and kids. But lightning made the hydro foreman in him antsy. He left early and drove around for a spell to see if there’d been any damage. It didn’t seem like there was and he went on home. His wife was at work and the kids were still out, so he watched some TV, then hit the hay. He was soon oblivious to what meteorologists would come to describe as a “60-year rainfall.”
Night of the Storm
Friday, May 12, and Saturday, May 13, 2000
THE BROOD MARE was ready to foal. Dr. David Biesenthal donned his boots and made his way to the front field to see whether she was ready to accept a helping hand. The rain, which had been coming down fitfully if heavily through much of the evening, was really pelting down. Lightning split the night sky as if angry gods were venting their fury on a hapless world. Biesenthal headed back inside. It was way too late anyway.
“To hell with you, you’re going to have to do it alone,” he said to his mare through the driving rain. But there was no trace of animosity in his voice.
The following morning, runoff had washed into the family room. Outside, Dave’s wife, Carolyn, noticed a strong mouldy smell, especially in the far corner of the farm by the highway. It smelled like dew worms. The rain gauge showed the storm had brought fifty millimetres of rain in a matter of hours. In the wet front field, a newborn foal struggled uncertainly to his legs, his mother nuzzling him in concerned encouragement. Night of the Storm, with his glossy brown coat and dazzling white patch on his forehead, had become the latest family member born on the Biesenthal farm.
Biesenthal was also relieved to find the storm has caused little damage. His care in tilling and planting his crops had paid off. There was no standing water and no evidence of serious runoff from the fields. He and Carolyn had bought their fifty-hectare farm and moved there from their house in Walkerton in 1973. He’d been working in a general veterinary clinic he and a partner had founded on the road to Hanover. But the farm, just minutes from the southwest edge of Walkerton, proved an ideal spot for a small cow-calf operation, cash cropping, and a horse clinic. Standing at the top of the long drive in front of the clinic and looking out over the fields of corn or beans, it’s easy to imagine being miles from urban civilization. Yet the nearest Becker’s convenience store is just minutes away. The entire farm, including the cozy two-storey yellow-brick L-shaped home with its small, well-tended flower garden in front, bespeaks a quiet pride. There is no debris or junk or any of the other bric-a-brac often found on rural properties. On a perfect May afternoon, with the magnolia bush flowering in full pinky-purply glory, it’s as close to an idyllic spot as anywhere.
In front of the barn, lowing calves were finding their legs, oblivious to the man watching them. There was a bit of scrub on the far side of the newly sown field about 150 metres to the east of where Dave Biesenthal stood. He’d driven past that bit of bush a thousand times over the years but never realized that what lay behind it was Well 5, one of the wells that fed the nearby town with drinking water. He had no idea, of course, that the recent rains, especially the big Friday-night storm, had pushed a lethal bacterial predator down beneath the emerging crops and fertile soil into the aquifer that fed the well that was being pumped to the taps of the town.
—
In Shallow Lake, about an hour’s drive from Walkerton, Mayor Dave Thomson was getting edgy as the Friday-evening agricultural meeting wound down. He could hear the fierce storm and it reminded him of one back in the summer of 1977, when lightning set his barn on fire.
“We’d better get out of here and get home,” he said to his wife, Helen.
The rain pelted the windshield as they drove. Huge drops seemed to dance above the road as they bounced off the glistening blacktop. The Thomsons were almost home when they noticed the lights gleaming off the inundated fields.
“Holy, we must have had one terrible rain down here,” Dave said.
The river that runs through the Thomson farm had flooded. On Saturday morning, he could see his cows over at the far side of the field, where they had sought higher ground, although they were still standing in water. Spring flooding isn’t unusual, but not since Hurricane Hazel in 1954, when four calves drowned, had the farm looked like this. Thomson and his son grabbed the tractor, hitched the wagon, and dumped a couple of bales of feed onto it, hoping to drive across the flooded creek and lure the cows back over toward the barn. Only the top strand of the page fence showed above the water and the wagon actually floated as they hauled it across. But it was for naught. The cows weren’t going to follow the wagon for any amount of feed. By Mother’s Day Sunday, the entire fence was submerged. It would be another day before the top page peeked through the muddy water again.
Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 14
Compared to the storm of 1947 or even that of Hurricane Hazel in 1954, the damage caused by the vicious Friday-night downpour was rel
atively minor. Some of the town’s low-lying streets flooded when the Saugeen spilled its banks. Half-a-dozen cars were partially submerged and some tree branches were down, but the skies had cleared and the cleanup was underway. Mother’s Day Sunday saw families and friends get together or head out for a meal. Some townsfolk engaged in the old ritual of walking out onto the bridge by Lobie’s Park, where the water had reached the first or second rung of the children’s slide, to watch the rushing river below. Word on the street was that the river would crest sometime in the early afternoon. The small island just to the east was almost submerged as the waters rose to within a metre of the bridge. On the west side, Silver Creek flowed furiously into the Saugeen. It was a fine day for river-watching or for celebrating an anniversary, as provincial police Const. Jamie McDonald and his wife, Cathy, were doing. Jamie took his children to one of the parks to marvel at the flooding. In Hanover, Peter Raymond and his physician wife, Esther, packed little Mary Rose into the family car and headed west to Walkerton to celebrate their second Mother’s Day at a restaurant. Small-town life. Small-town pleasures. Small-town peace.
The first Stan Koebel knew of the storm came as he drove down the steep Highway 4 dip and over the bridge into town by the Tim Hortons on his way home from his week away. As he passed the old Canada Spool and Bobbin smokestack, standing like a forlorn relic from another age in an otherwise empty field, the Saugeen struck him as unusually high, as if from a fast snowmelt. That didn’t make much sense though, given the unseasonably warm weather of recent weeks and the fact that the April rains had already washed away the snow.