Constructing community health and safety

Access to a sufficient amount of safe water is taken for granted in industrialised nations. Yet, as multiple incidents of contaminated water supplies show, citizens of highly industrialised nations such as Canada may not have access to safe water—the deadly E. coli outbreak in Waterton, Ontario, being but the most visible among many. Municipal engineers may find themselves between enemy lines as they are asked to assess available data of very different, even incommensurable, types in an evaluation of alternative solutions of access to safe water. Such access also takes into account safety issues such as those concerning the environment and fire hazards. This article reports the results of a ten-year anthropological study of science and municipal engineering in the oftenacrimonious conflict over access to the municipal watermain and safe water in one Canadian community. In the history of the conflict, municipal engineers repeatedly found themselves between a rock and a hard place, having to evaluate conflicting knowledge claims of qualitative and quantitative nature from quite different sources about the quantity and quality of water available to a part of the community zoned rural area. In considering solutions, the municipal engineers had to take into account oftenconflicting constraints posed by the environment, economy and social justice. Several alternatives are proposed that allow the integration of quantitative and qualitative knowledge in decision making concerning the different safety issues linked to municipal water.