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A sewage leak has created a small sinkhole in Richmond, southwest of Ottawa, says the general manager of Ottawa’s Environmental Services.
Dixon Weir says that city workers discovered the minor leak along the shoulder of Eagleson Road, near Perth Street, on Wednesday.
A sinkhole is a hole or depression in the earth that can be caused through erosion.
Weir says raw sewage leaked into the ground through a faulty pipe that was coming out of the Richmond pumping station.
“It hasn’t been a rupture or a failure,” he said. “It’s just been simply the bolts holding the coupling together have corroded to the point where they no longer have strength and so the joint pulls apart.”
Weir says the city has a couple of ponds available to them to discharge sewage on a temporary and emergency basis and that they’ve got the situation under control.
The city doesn’t yet know when the leak began, he says, but it has notified the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and expects the environmental impact to be minor.
Weir says Richmond residents shouldn’t be concerned about the leak.
Copyright 2009 – CBC News