A Windsor, Ont., tenant claims she found something moving in her water. But answers were hard to find

Nancy Basinger says she saw little ripples of movement inside a bucket water from her bathroom, and she almost couldn't believe her eyes.

The downtown Windsor, Ont., tenant says she immediately called over a friend to take a look at what she thought were little tiny fish swimming in her water. But she says she's since had them identified by a researcher as crustaceans — aquatic invertebrates known as amphipods. 

"I was totally and completely stunned," she said. 

"I couldn't believe there were live critters coming out of my faucet." 

Basinger says since spotting these crustaceans in her water on Feb. 12, she and two of her neighbours have stopped drinking or cooking with the water from the building. The city, the landlord and a consultant hired by the landlord say they haven't found an issue. But Basinger says she should have been kept more in the loop. 

Basinger told CBC News she has tried to get answers from several organizations, but doesn't feel like she's been properly notified or kept up to date about the issue. She feels her situation highlights the barriers tenants might face when they try to deal with residence-related issues themselves. 

"As a tenant, you don't have standing with the health unit, you don't have standing with Enwin water, you don't have standing to go to whomever, it's like this black hole I have fallen into," said Basinger. 

"And I'm very frustrated with it." 

Basinger lives at a low-rise apartment building in the area of Giles Boulevard West and Dougall Avenue.

Basinger told CBC News that she has reached out to the city's water and hydro company Enwin Utilities, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU), the City of Windsor and her landlord, Skyline Living.

But when she found it difficult to get immediate action or answers from any of these organizations, she said she took it upon herself to bring samples of her water to the University of Windsor's Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER). 

At GLIER, post-doctoral fellow Marco Hernandez identified the crustaceans in the water as amphipods and said they have shrimp-like qualities.

He assumes there might be a crack or leak in one of the building's pipes, but even then, he said the amiphipods shouldn't be alive. 

"Animals of that size shouldn't be thriving in fresh water, especially after being treated [by] the utility company here," he said.