WHEN GLENN Norman and Michelle Goodeve were yanked awake, one August morning, by a terrible, stomach-churning stench coming in their window, their first thought was that there had been some terrible mistake.
I interviewed them in the cosy living room of their century-old preacher's manse in the tiny village of Cedarville, two hours northwest of Toronto.
"We thought, 'Oh, we'll phone the township right away to report this disaster and they'll do something,'" Goodeve said. Norman and Goodeve - who have lived in the house for 13 years - were about to learn more about small-town politics, the Ministry of the Environment and Toronto poop than they had ever thought possible.
Yes, Toronto sends more than just its rotting orange peels to distant dumps. It sends its sewage sludge as well - half of what Toronto flushes down its toilets finds its way to Ontario farm fields, after brief treatment and "dewatering" at Ashbridge's Bay.
The system, according to the, Ministry of the Environment, is safe. Farmers who get a permit for spreading sewage - eight tonnes per hectare over five years - say that it saves them a hefty $ 100 an acre in the costs of tilling and fertilizing.
Norman and Goodeve don't blame the farmer who spread the stuff on the field that butts right up against their backyard, "He's been assured by the Ministry of the Environment that this stuff is safe, and he believes it," Norman said.
The couple, however, aren't so sure. The day of the spreading, they were swarmed by flies and their eyes were red and streaming. Because of Walkerton, they got nervous about their well. Rightly, so. Within days of the sludge spreading, their water - which had recently tested zero for E. coli - now tested_positive (4 parts per 100 millilitres). Eight days later, the E. coli count had jumped to 24. Neighbours'wells were unaffected.
"I can't make any conclusive link to the sewage sludge," Norman told me after spending over
$ 1,000 to install a water purification system. But he and Goodeve, dedicated pilots, went up in their open-cockpit plane and photographed a nearby sludge-darkened field, clearly showing a watercourse running through it.
"And that water linksup with the Saugeen River," Goodeve said meaningfully. "Walkerton is 30 miles downstream."
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