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hasn’t been a very good summer so far at Westboro Beach.
Of the 29 days of the city’s official beach season since June 21, Westboro Beach has been closed for 12 of those days because of high E. coli levels in the water.
A no-swimming advisory is issued if bacteria levels exceed 200 E. coli per 100 millilitres of water tested.
On June 30, levels of 1,000 per 100 ml of water were detected—more than five times the limit. That’s the highest count at the beach so far this year and the highest recorded at any city beach.
LOTS OF RAIN
Petrie Island Beach in the east end has come under fire over the past couple of years because of high levels of E. coli.
The reasons are now known, but even E. coli levels there haven’t come close to the levels found at Westboro Beach. The highest level at Petrie Island Beach this year was 411 on July 2.
That doesn’t come close to the second highest amount found at Westboro two days later when an E. coli count of 611 per 100 ml was recorded.
Dixon Weir, the city’s director of waste water services, said Westboro Beach has always been affected by even small amounts of rainfall.
“And we’ve had lots of rain this year. Five or six millimetres of rain can cause that beach to close and that’s not an awful lot of rain,” Weir said.
ANIMAL FECES
It isn’t sewer water working its way into the water at Westboro, it’s animal and bird feces and other waste that the rain washes into the storm water system that spills directly into the Ottawa River.
In newer suburbs, storm waters usually end up in a retention pond where larger floatables and bacteria can settle, minimizing what eventually flows into the river.
However, human waste can make its way into city storm sewers and then into the river.
Weir said someone who is completing home renovations can mistakenly connect a toilet to a storm water pipe.
“Inadvertent errors get made,” he said.
For more information on daily beach updates, visit www.ottawa.ca.
(C) Ottawa Sun