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The amount of sewage that has spilled into the Ottawa River this year has topped one billion litres.
Two separate rainfalls over the past week has forced the city’s sewer network to spill 63 million litres of sewage and untreated storm water into the river. The latest spills brings the total for 2009 to 1,027,000,000 litres and with the rain that has fallen on the city in the past day more sewage can be expected to spill into the Ottawa River.
The total spillage this year is well over double the amount of overflow that occurs during an average year.
Last week Ontario’s environment commissioner, Gord Miller, who was in the city to review the city’s combined sewer system, said the city is on track to solve its sewage-spill problem, but it doesn’t yet have a plan to tackle contaminated, untreated storm water from making its way into the river.
It’s the contaminated storm water that is the main cause of closures at beaches along the river because of high E. coli counts.
The city will have to spend about $400 million to stop the flow of sewage into the river, including ongoing work to install real-time control systems to better regulate sewage flows.