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March thaw saw 70,000 cubic metres of city’s raw sewage dumped into river
Almost 70,000 cubic metres of the city’s sewer overflow ended up in the Ottawa River in March due to rain and melting snow.
About 67,500 cubic metres of untreated sewage ended up in the river on March 11, and Orléans councillor Bob Monette said it was just too much for the current sewer system to handle.
“We were bound to get a large sewage spill,” he said. “In the time frame we’re talking about, we had a lot of melting temperatures, and snow on top of that and it reverted back to melting again. There was a lot of water run-off that had to go into the sewer system.”
Monette said that until 2008, a lot more raw sewage overflow was going into the river without any interruption at all.
In 2008, the City of Ottawa was ordered to pay a $562,000 fine for dumping a reported 764,000 cubic metres of sewage into the river in August 2006.
Recent funding going into Ottawa’s sewage treatment systems has been well worth it, Monette said, noting that the five-year plan will put about $250 million of federal, provincial and municipal cash into the city’s wastewater facilities.
“The purpose of the plan was basically to reduce combined sewage overflows,” he said. “It may seem like we had a high one, but you could imagine if we had not put in all the renovations, how high it would have been.”
The overall four-phase plan is to reduce combined sewage overflows, reduce storm water impact, improve wastewater treatment as well as measure and monitor performance.
“We, as a city, have taken a leadership role on this,” he said, noting that all sewage overflows are now reported online immediately.
According to the online reporting system, there have been three overflows this year – one on Feb. 18 that released 200 cubic metres and one on March 5 that released 2,300 cubic metres of sewage in addition to the March 11 release.
The largest release over the past year was on August 15, 2010, and rain pushed 75,350 cubic metres into the Ottawa River.
In total, since April 15, 2010, 961,150 cubic metres of wastewater has been released into the river through 64 “events.”
“What we need to look at is what we can do to make it so that eventually there is no sewage that ever goes into the water stream,” he said. “That is the ultimate goal of everybody, but we won’t do it overnight.”
To see the city’s combined sewer overflow activity, visit www.ottawa.ca/residents/waterwaste/combined_overflows/discharge_activity/index_en.html