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OTTAWA — About 88 million litres of mixed sewage and rain flowed into the Ottawa River thanks to storms in the last week of June, the city estimates.
Most of the city has separate sewers for stormwater and so-called sanitary sewage, but the older system downtown uses the same pipes for both. When rainwater overwhelms the system, it’s designed to vent the combined liquids into the river, rather than taking it to the city’s sewage-treatment plant in Gloucester.
The big overflow was on June 24, when heavy rain sent about 81.5 million litres of mixed sewage into the river; more followed on June 28. Rain also caused a malfunction in the system on the 24th, the city says, in which 1.3 million litres of sewage flowed into the river.
The city is carrying out a long-term plan to improve the quality and control of the “regulators” in the sewer pipes to minimize the amount of sewage that gets vented and to build large storage tanks to hold mixed sewage temporarily until the pipes can handle the load again.
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