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Transparent reporting of sewage spills and innovative thinking about waste treatment are necessary to maintain the health of the Ottawa river system, says Ottawa Riverkeeper.
At the organization’s 2008 general meeting last night, Meredith Brown, the riverkeeper and executive director of the group, offered Ottawa Riverkeeper members and the public a preview of the 2008 river report to be released this fall.
The report will focus on municipal waste water, a major issue facing the Ottawa River system, she said. More than 90 municipalities have some treated sewage running into the Ottawa River, but Ottawa and Gatineau sewers release untreated waste into the river after heavy rain.
“The raw sewage dumps, they’re happening quite frequently,” Ms. Brown said.
After a massive spill of sewage from the downtown combined sewer network in 2006 was made public last month, city staff pledged to report to council each time raw sewage entered the river.
City staff say it happened during heavy rains on May 26 and 31, and likely again last Sunday, when a series of heavy storms poured down on the city.
The city does not keep exact statistics on the amount of materials dumped into the rivers during rainstorms.
An increase in transparent reporting of sewage spills is key to creating change, Ms. Brown said.
“If municipalities have to report to the public every time they dump raw sewage into the river, you can bet that people in those communities are going to be saying, ‘This is ridiculous. We don’t want to be a community that dumps raw sewage into our water source.’”
A new federal strategy that will create sewage regulations under the Fisheries Act is slated to roll out over 30 years, but Ms. Brown said that, compared with cutting edge sewage systems in Singapore and Europe, “it’s not going to cut it.”
“I just think we to really start thinking a little bit more progressively and be a lot more innovative than what the feds are proposing,” she said.
The Ottawa River waterway is globally significant, but is “falling between the cracks,” according to Ms. Brown.
“We spend a lot of money pulling water out of the river and treating it to drinking water quality,” she said, “and then we flush our toilets and water our lawns. We need to start rethinking some major systems.”