A lawsuit challenging the city’s practice of fluoridating the water supply has been withdrawn.

Kevin Millership, a Kootenay resident who first launched the action in March 2014, said Tuesday that he has signed a consent dismissal order and has mailed it to the city’s lawyer.

Millership said the order dismisses his claim against the city without costs and “forever releases the city from being sued by me again in the future in regards to water fluoridation past or future in Prince George.”

Millership said he discontinued his claim because the city is in the process of removing the equipment used to fluoridate the water in response to the referendum result from November. The No side came away with a 53.7 per cent majority.

“I salute the people of Prince George that eliminated this needless poison from their water supply via referendum and forgive the City of Prince George for poisoning people in Prince George for decades with water fluoridation out of pure and simple ignorance and arrogance,” Millership said in an e-mail.

Millership had contended the fluoride to the city water is the cause of the degenerative tooth disease dental fluorosis and maintained one in 10 people in Prince George has “objectionable” levels of the condition.

Dental fluorosis is a mottling of the tooth enamel that, in the mild form, causes paper white spots or streaks on tooth enamel, worsening to orange and brown stained teeth with pitted and eroded sections that are more prone to decay in the more severe cases.

Millership also claimed most dental plans do not cover the cost of treatment that can range from $1,000 to $100,000 per person with treatment ongoing for a lifetime in some cases, in addition to the psychological damage sufferers face.

Millership also argued the city violated legislation by starting the practice in September 1955 without taking the issue to a referendum. He said the city stopped fluoridating its water for a time in 1998 until the provincial government granted it an exemption from holding a referendum.

And Millership asserts the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been violated because no referendum was held.

He was seeking a court order to end fluoridation as well as costs and further relief as the court sees fit. The city had denied the allegations in a response filed a month after Millership initiated the claim.

A landscaper who lives in Slocan, Millership originally launched the lawsuit as a class action but because such actions require formal legal representation, he changed it to a negligence claim and a constitutional challenge in September.