envh 502 assignment 4 march 27 2020
Background
You are a public health inspector working and living in the County of Concordia and have a number of rural establishments that use well water, truck-hauled cistern water or some combination of both as the potable water supply for their businesses.
One business in particular tends to occupy a significant amount of inspection time by you throughout the course of the year.That business is Karen’s roadside truck stop & gas bar and motel located on a major highway running through the County of Concordia.Karen’s has been in business for more than 25 years and is a favourite local coffee hangout for local residents, as well as travellers passing through.There are scheduled environmental public health inspections done at this establishment for the restaurant, the grocery store and the motel, which also include the complaint inspection when an occasional complaint is made to the local environmental public office and is registered by a dissatisfied customer of Karen’s.
Karen’s roadside truck stop & gas bar has 4 gas and diesel pumps, a coin operated carwash, a small grocery store and 25-seat restaurant that is attached to the truck stop premises where Karen’s provides homestyle cooked diner type meals and snacks to travellers passing through and where some of the food is frozen (e.g. restaurant homemade soups, perogies, bread) and sold in the attached grocery store.The grocery store also sells fresh food (e.g. milk, meat, vegetables, bread, etc.), as well as, non-perishable dry and/or canned foods to travellers and persons staying at Karen’s motel, which is adjacent to Karen’s truck stop, gas bar & restaurant.The motel rooms have small kitchenettes that allow guests to cook meals in their rooms, as well as stay there.The average length of stay is about 2 to 7 days, but there are about 5 motel rooms-kitchenette suites rented out on a yearly basis to some oilfield workers that work at a nearby refinery.
This establishment has three groundwater wells located in the following places in and around Karen’s place.One well (well #1) is located about 8 feet away from the gas pumps and is just in front of the entrance to the restaurant – grocery store; this well is below ground but is enclosed in a cement pit with a locking cover at the ground surface.Well #1 is completed about 85 feet below ground and is approximately 25 years old.This well supplies Karen’s restaurant and the adjoining grocery store.There is also a water tap on the north side of the truck stop building where passing travellers can fill up the water tanks in their recreational trailers for a small fee.That tap is supplied by well #1 and well #2.
The second well (well #2) is located just down the hill in a small ditch behind the truck stop & gas bar, still on Karen’s property, has a well stack that is about three feet high above the ground surface.The second well supplies the car wash, but also supplies the truck stop and gas bar via a buried cement water cistern (about 25 years old and is between Karen’s truckstop and Karen’s motel). that is filled with about 50% water from well #2, 30% from well #1 and 20% from well #3.The second well is about 100 feet deep and is about 15 years old.
The third well (well #3) is located behind the motel office and living quarters of Karen and her family; well #3 is about 180 feet deep and is about 5 years old now.Well #3 supplies groundwater to Karen’s private residence as well as to the water cistern, as described above, that provides water to Karen’s motel.
Karen has minimum water treatment for her establishment’s groundwater cistern; there is an iron filter in the truck-stop immediately after the water pressure tank, and there is a second iron filter immediately after the pressure tank in Karen’s residence (well #3).She uses a water distiller in her private residence.There is a carbon filter after the iron filter in the truck stop and Karen got tired of hearing customer complaints that the tap water smelled a bit like “rotten eggsâ€; she last changed the carbon in that filter about 2 years ago.
Karen takes chemical water samples from her three wells every 5 years and submits them to the approved public health laboratory.The last water samples were taken about 2 years ago and the results were as follows:
Table 1:Chemical groundwater results from Karen’s three groundwater wells
|
Parameter |
Well #1 |
Well #2 |
Well #3 |
|
Color |
10 TCU |
12 TCU |
5 TCU |
|
Fluoride |
2.3 mg/L |
3.5 mg/L |
1.2 mg/L |
|
Hardness |
49 ppm |
35 ppm |
104 ppm |
|
Magnesium |
132 mg/L |
135 mg/L |
95 mg/L |
|
Calcium |
100 mg/L |
95 mg/L |
89 mg/L |
|
Nitrate-Nitrite |
1.0 mg/L |
0.85 mg/L |
0.005 mg/L |
|
Odor |
Sometimes a slight rotten egg smell |
Sometimes a slight rotten egg smell |
Sometimes a slight rotten egg smell |
|
Iron |
2.0 mg/L |
3.1 mg/L |
0.3 mg/L |
|
pH |
5.5 |
5.8 |
6.5 |
|
Sodium |
175 mg/L |
190 mg/L |
240 mg/L |
|
Sulfate |
535 mg/L |
450 mg/L |
200 mg/L |
|
Total Dissolved Solids |
75 ppm |
95 ppm |
140 ppm |
|
Conductivity |
200 mS/cm |
225 mS/cm |
290 mS/cm |
Well #1 was shock-chlorinated about 8 years ago, well #2 was shock-chlorinated about 5 years ago and well #2 was shock-chlorinated about 2 years ago.The entire complex at Karen’s is served by a single septic field built about 20 years ago and which also serves wastewater effluents from Karen’s car wash operation.There are approximately 5 to 10 patrons per week that may use the car wash facilities, especially in the summertime.Occasionally car wash water and soap suds have been seen coming out of the septic tank and running down towards the ditch behind Karen’s establishment.
Karen does take periodic water samples for bacteriological testing (i.e. presence/absence of total and fecal coliforms), which she drops off at the local EPH district office to send to the Provincial Laboratory for testing.Well #1 was last sampled (once) about 1.5 years ago, well #2 was sampled once about 1 year ago and well #3 was sampled three times in the past 12 months, with the last bacteriological water sample taken two weeks ago.Karen has, upon you advice in your last inspection of her restaurant, submitted water samples for bacteriological testing from well #1 and 2 in the past week.Both of those samples tested positive for the presence of total coliforms; well #3 also tested positive for total coliforms, but the resample showed 2 cfu total coliforms.
Assignment Questions (worth 100 points and 10% of your grade) (assignment length about 4 pages in total)
Please state any assumptions you make when crafting your answers/recommendations for this assignment to help me to understand your line of thinking.
- What parts of Karen’s establishment, as described above, are subject to public health legislative requirements for potable water?
- List them and the applicable public health legislation (Alberta based) (10 marks)
- What concerns do you have about Karen’s existing water system with respect to its ability to provide potable water as required by public health legislation?List and briefly provide public health rationale to back up your concerns.(45 points)
- What do you tell Karen to do with respect to her water system to ensure her groundwater system is producing and distributing potable water to all of the parts of her establishment that require a supply of safe potable water?(e.g. treatment recommendations, sampling frequency, actual water system rehabilitation recommendations, etc.)
- Why are you telling her what you recommend, based on your public health knowledge and experience with potable water?(45 points)
