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There are three elements to a successful beach: sand, water and people. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it?
Yet before the city poured $2 million into developing the Petrie Island beach, one would think that it would seriously take into account the quality of sand and water. And maybe it did. Perhaps it thinks the presence of human fecal matter there is but a minor hindrance to swimming. Perhaps that’s how low our standards have sunk when it comes to the environment. In fact, an Environment Canada report says that sand at the beach is “serving as a reservoir for E. coli.”
Despite that, 232,000 people visited the beach last summer, including 18,500 on Canada Day. Perhaps as a community, we choose to overlook the condition of the Ottawa River.
That would be wrong. When we examine the resources that make Ottawa a high-quality place to live, our rivers serve as among our greatest assets. After all, not only do we swim in them, we drink from them. What a spectacular boost to our quality of life here if our rivers were something you could just dive into with confidence they were clean, rather than tip-toeing along the edge in fear of disease. With human feces along the shore, in the sand and the water, it’s like a walk along the edge of a toilet bowl.
But people in the east end wanted a beach, come hell or dirty water, so the city responded, ignoring the obvious problems of location downstream of downtown and the city’s sewage treatment plant. Perhaps we like the idea of a beach more than the putrid reality of Petrie Island.
Part of the problem is the incredible dysfunction of our governance. A city short of money cannot fix the infrastructure problem of joined sanitary and storm-water sewers. While Environment Canada in a report did not identify a culprit for the human fecal problems at Petrie Island, Ottawa’s sewer system is a very likely suspect. When it rains heavily in Ottawa, the combined sewers contain more water than can be treated so the disgusting overflow gushes into the Ottawa River.
Cities, and Ottawa in particular, short of money, cannot hope to find the millions necessary to repair ancient infrastructure. So the residents of Canada’s fourth largest urban area swim in filth. All the while the federal government pockets $14 billion a year in surplus. Yet the 80 per cent of Canadians who live in cities do not have adequate infrastructure. If you think Canada is people rather than geography, underfunding cities underfunds Canada. Is that not a federal problem?
The city, rather than doing the unfashionable thing and using $2 million to help fix an aging sewer system, builds a popular beach in human feces. Petrie Island is a good example of how Canadians are being poorly served by dysfunctional government.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008