Region turns thumbs down to adding fluoride to water at Welland treatment plant

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Region turns thumbs down to adding fluoride to water at Welland treatment plant
Feb 27, 2008
By Paul Forsyth
NiagaraThisWeek.com

The issue of whether or not fluoride should be added to drinking water in Niagara has been laid to rest for good.
A last-ditch effort to have fluoride added at the Welland water treatment plant so people in Welland, urban areas of Pelham and part of south Thorold will have the cavity-fighting substance in their tap water was defeated at a meeting of Niagara region politicians last Thursday.

That decision came nearly a month after the majority of regional councillors decided against introducing fluoride on a Niagara-wide basis.

Welland Coun. George Marshall told politicians at the most recent meeting that the region owed it to people in his city to re-introduce fluoride.

Welland residents approved fluoridated water in the 1960s in a referendum and the city's water supply continued to have fluoride added when the region took over water treatment nearly 40 years ago. But the region quietly stopped fluoridating the Welland plant's water supply in 1999 because the fluoridation equipment kept breaking down.

Marshall said Welland dentists were "outraged" upon learning in 2006 that fluoridation had stopped several years earlier, because their treatment of kids was based on believing those patients were still receiving fluoride in their tap water.

He said the region has a "moral and legal obligation" to re-introduce fluoride.

Regional staff said it would cost about $3 million for equipment and $600,000 a year to fluoridate all of Niagara's drinking water or about $200,000 up front and $60,000 a year to only add fluoride at the Welland plant.

Adding fluoride to the Welland plant, according to a report last summer, would mean Pelham residents who had never asked for fluoridation would also receive treated water because the systems are connected.

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