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EMC Editorial Growing up one of my favourite pastimes in the summer was swimming and I bet it would still be if the water in Ottawa were cleaner.
I just cannot believe the state of our watersheds in the Ottawa area.
To me summertime means hanging out by a lake, swimming, going on a boat ride, all the while enjoying the sunshine tasks that have become much more trying in Ottawa of late.
Growing up, one of my favourite things to was sit in a boat with two or three of my close friends and travel around our local waterways. We would go swimming, cliff jumping, or just hang out on the water. In fact, one of my best friends loved this lifestyle so much she used to live at her parents’ cottage for the summer and drive 40 minutes into work when needed.
I’ve been in Ottawa for six years now and have spent the summer here for three of those years.
When I first came to Ottawa I was naive and went swimming whenever I wanted. I’d never experienced days when the beaches were closed. I didn’t understand that.
My Ottawa-raised friends would make fun of me for swimming when the beaches were closed and kept asking me when my third leg or eye would grow in.
I just thought they were paranoid or wimps.
Clearly, I was wrong.
Following each time I took a plunge into local waterways a shower was immediately required to wash off the residue that clung to my skin.
I started to look into why the beaches would be closed and became more aware of high bacteria in the water.
Then I started paying attention to the reports of all the raw sewage being dumped into our waterways as a result of the city’s sewer overflow problem.
I find this sickening. I realize lakes in general aren’t the cleanest places, with oil and gas from boats in them among other items, but the amount of raw sewage the city seems to continually allow be dumped into our waterways is terrible.
I now don’t swim in Ottawa. I used to go to the beaches and spend time cooling down in knee-deep water, but I no longer feel comfortable with even that anymore, particularly this summer’s heavy rainfall.
Every day, it seems, there is another report of more sewage being dumped into the river.
Simply put, this needs to stop!
The latest spill, at the time of publication, was 30 million litres of combined raw sewage and storm water. So far this year, nearly 800 million litres has spilled into the river double the typical amount.
I understand that back when the sewer system was built the city was smaller, with fewer technology capabilities.
But now the city has grown, and keeps growing, and more needs to be done to put an end to this matter.
Water is going to be one of most important environmental resources in the future and here we are destroying one of our rivers. We can’t let this keep happening.
As Canada’s capital we need to set a better example and soon.