A request from Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh for funding from the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund to address arsenic levels in the Dungannon drinking water system has been turned down.
Reeve Ben Van Diepenbeek explains arsenic levels in the system are just slightly above acceptable levels and they were hoping to get funding from the OCIF program to upgrade the system.
Van Diepenbeek says they were told there's more need than there is money, so a lot of projects were turned down.
"We applied for the Ontario Community Infrastructure, OCIF, the top-up application and we were not successful in that one," he says. "What we are doing is, B. M. Ross is our engineering company Veolia Water is our manager of the water system and basically, they're exploring the options of putting filtration on it, and we're just borderline on the arsenic, on the level."
Van Diepenbeek says it won't be cheap but it could provide a permanent solution to the problem.
He says they should have an answer within a couple of months, but he believes the cost could be around $500,000.
