Canadian Waterkeepers formally recommend that, any new regulations drafted under the Federal Fisheries Act must prohibit the discharge of deleterious substances into Canadian waters, regardless of who is releasing them or how much money it will cost to fix the problem.
Click here [pdf file: 0.5mb] to read the official submission
John Baird and the Harper government are poising themselves to make an announcement that they say will take tough action on sewage. John Baird has been quoted in the media numerous times saying “I can’t believe it’s legal to dump raw sewage in Canada”.
Ottawa Riverkeeper wants to set the facts straight…it is NOT LEGAL to dump raw sewage. The federal and provincial governments have the legal tools to stop the dumping of raw sewage today. Unfortunately, they have not taken a tough stance on this issue.
For many years, Environment Canada has been working on a Strategy for Managing Municipal Wastewater. Ottawa Riverkeeper recently attended another consultation on the strategy. The new National Standards will eventually be enacted as Regulations under the Federal Fisheries Act.
The new regulations will not do much to stop sewage bypass events and combined sewer overflows—the major contributor of raw sewage dumped in the Ottawa River. The best case scenario is that in 30-50 years all municipalities will have secondary treatment. Too bad this will not address today’s emerging issues of concern like pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors and other toxic chemicals entering our waterways via sewage.
The strategy does NOT address biosolids derived from wastewater. Just last week industry reps met with government officials to push for changes in regulations to allow sewage sludge fertilizers to be described as ‘organic’. Currently they are specifically banned from certified organic farming practices. No funding was made available for environmental NGOs to participate in the meetings. Another case of industry driving regulation changes in our country.