Mr. Chairman, there are three different kinds of testing that are done. First is an operational type of testing to ensure that there's sufficient chlorine residual in the water to control bacteria. Typically those tests are carried out between one and three times a day. Depending on the type of system, it will generally be tested in a couple of different locations.
In a trucked system, you test the water that's in the truck. In the pipe system, you will also test at the end of the pipe, to make sure that in fact there's sufficient chlorine residual. Frequently what they'll do is they take a sample out of a building and test for chlorine. Chlorine is important because that's what controls bacteria, and bacteria tends to be the contaminant that's of most critical concern.
With respect to the second type of testing, and that is bacterial testing, we do that, or at least the water plant operators will take samples, or samples will be collected by the environmental health officer on a schedule as dictated by the environmental health officer. Again, those are typically done in a number of different locations in a community, and they are done on a frequency... I believe Canadian drinking water guidelines suggest that, for every 1,000 people in a community, sampling be done once per month. So in a community of Yellowknife's size, that's the way they would calculate it. If the community is smaller, they would do it no less than four times in a month.
The third type of testing that's done is for chemical contaminants or chemical characteristics, and that varies from the more esthetic parameters such as taste and odor, appearance -- so the colour -- up to the more significant potential contaminants which would include heavy metals or radiological products. Those types of tests are done -- because they are fairly complex tests, they are fairly costly tests and those parameters don't change on a daily basis -- once a year, I believe it is. There are 24 of those chemical and physical parameters that are tested for. In addition to that, as part of that, Trihalomethane, THM, is tested typically on a semi-annual basis, unless it's an area where we have a particular concern with it.