By Stan Josey  Toronto Star Durham Region Bureau Chief
Toronto Star July 15,2000 page F5

Durham Region is asking the province to put new rules in place to require private water testers to report polluted water supplies to the local board of health. 

The action came yesterday as the regional government tried to get to the bottom of the latest E. coli contamination scare, this time in a quiet corner of south Pickering. 

Several residents of Squires Beach Rd. complained to their local politicians late last week after gradually finding out that their wells were contaminated with various levels of E. coli bacteria. 

One strain of the bacteria, E. coli O157:H7, was responsible for at least seven deaths in the Walkerton area earlier this summer. 

While no serious illnesses have been reported in Pickering, residents expressed concern that they were not notified sooner. 

Durham Region chair Roger Anderson said yesterday he was sending a letter to Environment Minister Dan Newman asking him to introduce legislation or change current regulations to order the reporting of drinking water contamination. 

``The way the present regulations are written, there is no responsibility on anyone's part to notify public health authorities of contamination of private water sources,'' Anderson said in an interview. 

The Squires Beach houses are owned by the Ontario Realty Corp., a provincial government agency, and are managed by Del Management Solutions of Locust Hill, east of Markham. 

Yesterday, both the realty corporation and the management company claimed that all Squires Beach residents were notified of their well contamination on the same day the well test results were received. 

``All of the residents were either telephoned directly or hand-delivered a letter informing them of the contamination,'' said Rob Watt, a vice-president with Del Management. 

The company, which manages 3,500 housing units across the province for the corporation, said it also ordered bottled water for the affected residents and told them it was available at the management office in North Pickering. 

Watt said the misconception that there was a delay in informing the residents came from the fact that the letters that were delivered by courier over the last week were dated June 26. They were form letters that had been given out starting in late June through last week as test results on different wells came in. The date on the letter was never changed. 

The contamination problem is not exclusive to Pickering, said Judith Baird of the realty corporation. As a ``responsible landlord,'' the realty corporation started testing all 350 wells on properties it owns across Ontario on June 15. So far about 250 have been tested and about 60 per cent of these have shown to be contaminated. 

She said heavy rainfall may be causing runoff to contaminate the wells. 

All of the affected wells now are being cleaned.