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“In one respect, I’m pleasantly surprised. The Ministry of the Environment is taking action on this. It’s interesting because charges like this don’t come up that often. They must have a fairly bad track record to be getting to this level. Some groups have been fighting to get their municipalities into court.”
Charges were laid several months ago. They concern failing to comply with conditions to operate and maintain the sewage works so that effluent parameters are not exceeded and stem from two time periods. The first was from the beginning of June 2005 to the end of April 2006; and the second, from the beginning of June 2006 to the end of November the same year.
The court date is set for January 17, 2008 at 9 a.m. in L’Orignal.
Regrettably, there are already many sources of sewage in the Ottawa River, Brown observes, with Ottawa and Gatineau as major culprits.
The sewage treatment plant in Hawkesbury is a secondary treatment plant, which is good, she says: most municipalities along the Ottawa River are primary treatment plants with lower standards. This is true on the Québec side, for example, where they don’t chlorinate their effluent.
Bottom line: who should pay for this?
“That’s always the biggest question – where the money is going to come from,” acknowledges Brown. “All the solutions to sewage treatment are very capital intensive.” The Riverkeeper agrees there’s a need for federal and provincial money as well as municipal funding: “Many of these municipalities will never have the money. They can’t fund one of these facilities by themselves – and some of these small communities have not just money issues but capacity issues.”
The federal government has a new strategy earmarking dollar amounts for upgrades. Some funds are already available but difficult to access. Some municipalities, Brown says, have applied three years in a row for money and been denied the funds so far.
On the one hand, she argues, “Municipal waste is created by the people in the municipality and they need to be responsible for their waste. If they need to increase taxes so be it.” However, she concedes: “It’s obviously harder on the smaller municipalities.”
The town of Hawkesbury itself got no funds from the most recent allocation of the Canada-Ontario Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund (COMRIF) program grants, and as a result, had to suspend the second stage of its sewage system upgrades in 2005 when it concluded it could no longer afford to complete the job.
Meanwhile, in a November 19 meeting, Hawkesbury Mayor Jeanne Charlebois argued against even considering the purchase of a new fire truck to replace a derelict 30-year old model, declaring sewage treatment plant upgrade funding needs eclipsed fire department requirements.