Caution: contaminated water
Should the presence of so many coliforms in open air be considered a risk to public health? The city avoids the question and the Public Health Agency declines comment. Courrier Laval put the question to health experts.
"At 60,000 (fecal coliforms per 100 ml), it's no longer just a question of environmental concern, it's a question of public health," states Daniel Green, science counselor at the Sierra Club of Canada, without hesitation.
According to Mr. Green, who is also the person behind the RIVE program (Réseau d'inspection et de vérification des eaux - Water Inspection and Verification Network), Laval authorities must act and envisage installing sewers in Saint-François.
"There's room for cage rattling in the second most important municipality in Quebec [Laval]. Signs should be posted at the points of emission to indicate the presence of contaminated water, he adds.
No worse than a farm
Pierre Payment, physician specializing in environmental virology and professor at the INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier is of the opinion that this is strictly an environmental problem. To walk around on the banks of the Rivière des Mille Îles, in the area combed by Courrier Laval, "is no worse than visiting a farm."
It would be a different problem if there were beaches in the area, he maintains. He emphasizes that most of the fecal coliforms are not pathogenic, thus not a threat to human health.
At such high levels of concentration as detected in Saint-François, "the risk is high", concludes for his part a microbiologist who requested anonymity. "We don't know what's in there. It's not anything anyone should touch."
"Immoral"
"Yes, it's a problem of public health," hammers home chemist Tony Le Sauteur,
specialist in the protection of Quebec Lakes and author of the first version of the Regulation respecting waste water disposal systems for isolated residences, tabled in 1966. To state the opposite is simply "immoral" he maintains.
"There shouldn't even be any pipes," he says. Prior to amendments made to the original regulation, the only approved means of disposing toilet water from a residence was by drainage (diffusion into the soil)," Mr. Le Sauteur explains.
The former Health Ministry civil servant believes that by allowing waste into the environment "We're not taking the people into consideration."
"We're not taking people into consideration."
- Tony Le Sauteur, chemist
Coliforms: an indicator
The coliforms tested by the Quebec government-certified laboratories are of the generic E.coli type: non-pathogenic micro-organisms present in human intestines. These should not be confused with the E.coli 157, the cause of hamburger illness and for the contamination of water in Walkerton, Ontario. The E. coli 157 is nonetheless never there if the generic E. coli is not there. The detection of the latter thus indicates that there is a potential of risk to public health.
Météo: Laval, 22 mai 2008 / 12°C
/ Faible averse de pluie
/ Vents: 9 Km/h / Humidité relative: 67 % 
Steven Guilbeault - 
