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The plan for building huge underground storage tanks to prevent untreated sewage from flowing into the Ottawa River has been delayed, even as an estimated 271 million litres of combined sewage and stormwater have flowed into the river since March.
And construction of the project, which will cost a minimum of $140 million, will not start until the funding from the federal and provincial governments have been officially committed, vowed Mayor Jim Watson.
“We can’t afford this project on our own,” said Watson, who was in Toronto Monday lobbying provincial leaders for funds for transit, housing and the Ottawa River Action Plan. “We wouldn’t start construction until we had a firm commitment from the other two levels of government.”
The Ottawa River Action Plan is a $250-million initiative comprised of 17 individual projects aimed at improving the water quality of the river. The federal and provincial governments each kicked in $33 million, while the city contributed $34 million, to begin work on a number of the tasks. But the $140 million (or more) for the storage tanks is still uncommitted.
And it’s unclear when it’s coming.
According to a spokesman for Conservative House Leader John Baird, the federal government’s “infrastructure funds are fully committed and we met all the city’s priorities” by making that $33-million contribution.
“We are pleased to work with the city on the next infrastructure program once they have completed their current projects,” said Baird’s spokesman Chris Day in an e-mailed statement. “The people of Ottawa and John Baird see this as a priority. That said, the city didn’t get in this trouble overnight . neither will they get out of it right away.”
The city is still waiting on the environmental assessment for the tanks, which was expected to be completed by the end of 2010.
The assessment is necessary before the complex underground storage system can be designed. And although the city has budgeted about $140 million for the underground tanks, it’s impossible to know the true price tag until the detailed design work has been completed.
The primary obstacle to keeping pollutants from pouring into the river is the 120 kilometres of combined storm-and-waste water sewers in the older parts of the city. The combination sewers were designed to intentionally spill excess waste water into the river when capacity was exceeded, in order to prevent flooding and basement backups.
After extensive public consultation, the city has come up with a plan to store overflow in massive underground tanks, which are really a series of three-metre-wide tunnels totalling six kilometres in length and running from LeBreton Flats to New Edinburgh. The overflow can then be funnelled to the waste water treatment plant later on, once there’s enough capacity to handle it.
The city voluntarily posts on its website estimated levels of combined storm water and sewage overflow based on the amount of rain Ottawa receives. Dixon Weir, the city’s manager of environmental services, could not estimate how much of the combined overflow was made up of sewage, but said it was “very diluted.”
Ottawa Riverkeeper Meredith Brown said that in a project as complicated as the underground storage tanks, delays are to be “expected,” but she is still concerned about the empirical amounts of pollutants entering the river -and not just from the raw sewage.
“People have this concept that storm water is just like rainwater,” Brown said. “But storm water is chock-a-block full of pollutants as well.
“It’s travelling over roads, parking lots, lawns and picking up fertilizers, pesticides, oil, grease, antifreeze -anything dripping out of people’s cars.”
Currently, the amount of overflow going into the Ottawa River does not meet provincial guidelines. However, levels have improved since the problem was first brought to the public’s attention. In 2010, 443 million litres of combined overflow entered the river, compared with 895 million litres in 2008.
That’s because the city implemented “real-time control” technology at five of the city’s water regulators. The new electro-mechanical systems allow more of the waste water to remain in the system, so less overflow is released.
The first-ever report on the actual volume of overflow that entered the river in 2010 -instead of just estimates based on rainfall -is also behind schedule. It was expected during the winter, but other issues in the city’s environment department, such as the garbage review and the failure of the Woodroffe Avenue water main, caused delays in other projects. However, the report should be available within weeks, according to Weir. And by the end of 2011, city staff expects to have technology in place to provide those real measurements on the City of Ottawa website as a matter of course.