operators receive 40 hours of continuing education per year, Stan Koebel interpreted this to include activities only marginally related to water systems, such as CPR certification, and as a result neither brother used continuing education time to gain or maintain expertise in water safety. As a result of their lack of formal training and their overseeing themselves, the Koebel brothers were relatively uninformed about water safety. Both later testified that they were not familiar with sections of the Ontario Drinking Water Standards documentation (ODWS) that dealt with tasks they needed to be aware of to do their jobs adequately: manager Stan Koebel had not read the section of the ODWS about identifying contaminated water, while foreman Frank Koebel had not read the chapter on chemical testing of water for safety purposes. Neither man had more than a passing familiarity with E. coli or the danger the bacteria posed to water systems, nor with chlorination standards and best practices. Well system and maintenance The wells that drew water for Walkerton were known as Well 5, Well 6, and Well 7, with Well 5 being both the southernmost and the closest to the residential portion of the township. Well 5, drawing water from depths of and through soft limestone, was brought online to the Walkerton water system in 1978, following a hydrological evaluation commissioned by the PUC. Because Well 5's aquifer drew partially from spring-fed, gravel-soiled zones that were prone to absorbing surface runoff, the hydrological evaluation recommended that Well 5 be monitored regularly to ensure that water was being drawn from lower well depths rather than higher ones. It also recommended that land usage in the immediate area of the well be limited in light of agricultural waste runoff being detectable in the well's water. Neither of these recommendations was implemented as conditions of operation when Well 5 received a Certificate of Approval in 1979. Multiple subsequent tests on the well between 1979 and 2000 continued to conclude that due to the shallow depth at which Well 5 was drilled and the tendency of its water level and makeup to be directly affected by surface runoff, caution toward contamination levels in the well was advisable. Wells 6 and 7 were drilled more deeply and drew from areas of land with significantly less fractured bedrock than well 5. In 2000, Ontario law indicated that in a community the size of Walkerton, at