Drilling for ground source heat pump systems causes alarm

The mayor of Oakville, a small town west of Toronto, is calling for the province to regulate the drilling of geothermal wells for ground source heat pump systems.

According to the Toronto Star, Mayor Rob Burton has written to Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario, calling for a moratorium on deep well drilling in dense urban areas. This is after a contractor drilling a vertical borehole field near a home hit pressurized natural gas hundreds of feet deep. The contractor reportedly had no gas detection equipment.

A few days before that, a homeowner 100 metres from the same site had complained about bubbling from a sump pump hole and investigators found high levels of gas inside and outside the home.

The newspaper report said the Fire Chief was also calling on the province to develop regulations for borehole drilling.