By Derek Cornet

Drinking water at La Ronge Airport deemed potentially unsafe

Jan 17, 2018 | 11:00 AM

For close to three weeks now, visitors and staff at the La Ronge Airport have been advised not to drink the tap water due to possible contaminates.

After receiving a letter from Transport Canada late last year asking if they could send an environmental consultant to drill holes, as well as collect and test groundwater at the location, officials with the Town of La Ronge did testing of their own. According to Chief Administrative Officer Stephen Conway, initial lab results showed contamination levels “higher than they’ve ever seen.”

“We immediately prevented all staff and members of the public from drinking water at the terminal and our shop,” he said. “We want to do a second test to make sure our results are proper. Those results are not yet back, so we’re erring on the side of caution.”

The letter from Transport Canada also noted contamination could have occurred during the use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which were a key ingredient used to make firefighting foams. The product was used during fire training exercises. The letter states PFAS are not biodegradable and may migrate away from the site.

“We are seeing in our facilities, high contaminates in the potable water,” Conway said. “The bigger question is what is the source of the contamination, if indeed it is contaminated. You have to be able to prove the correlation between the two.”

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In a follow up email from Transport Canada to larongeNOW, the federal department stated PFAS were used between the late 1960s and 2002, and the substances weren’t known to be a contaminate of concern at the time. It noted potential health risks depends on how much and how long an individual is exposed to PFAS. In testing, animals exposed to PFAS experienced negative health effects including liver and neurological damage. There is little information on how human health is affected by the contaminant. 

“Transport Canada is proactively reaching out to select airports it previously owned to request permission to test for offsite PFAS concentrations surrounding firefighting training areas,” the email stated. “Transport Canada conducted a historical review of environmental conditions at all transferred airports and prioritized the airports based on a number of factors.”

Those factors included airport site conditions, the distance of the firefighting training area to the airport property boundary and to drinking water sources, the email stated.

derek.cornet

Twitter: @saskjourno