Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
City hires Toronto expert to probe billion-litre sewage spill
The city has hired a former waste water manager from Toronto to review the massive raw sewage spill into the Ottawa River in August 2006.
Mike Price will be assisting City Manager Kent Kirkpatrick with his review into the incident that dumped a billion litres of raw sewage into the river after a sewer gate jammed and went unnoticed for two weeks.
In a memo to council Kirkpatrick said Price “possesses the pre-requisite technical expertise, as well the organizational and public sector experience required to complete a rigorous review within a short timeframe.”
Price, whose company Price and Associates, will “determine whether the city effectively fulfilled its regulatory compliance requirements at the time.”
One city employee has already been fired after he admitted he didn’t follow city procedure in alerting the provincial Ministry of the Environment when he said he had at the time.
A key objective of the review will be to determine what steps and changes need to be made to ensure a similar incident doesn’t happen again.
Kirkpatrick said Price needs to verify and validate all of the information that was known at the time of the spill, when it was known and what was done with the information.
Price also needs to confirm what actions were taken and why in relation to the August 2006 overflow event.
The city’s Auditor General, the MOE and the federal government have also launched their own investigations into the spill. Once Price completes his report its findings will be made available to the AG who is expected to release his report in September. The AG’s review will include an examination of the province’s response to this incident and if it followed provincial policies, legislation and regulations.
Straight to the source: ottawasun.com