January 2005
                                          PETITION:

To the Mayor and Council of the city of Ottawa from the residents of the community of Richmond, Goulbourn,
Ward 6

"It has been clearly pointed out to you that in choosing a forcemain through Richmond's water supply rather than on-site treatment of Munster's sewage, you have violated a fundamental principle of Risk Management as well as the precautionary principle applied in matters of public health. You have been made aware that there is legal opinion that the Class Environmental Assessment Addendum for addressing Munster's wastewater treatment was illegal, in that it was not conducted in accordance with Ontario's Environmental Assessment Act.

In light of the foregoing, we, the community of Richmond, call upon you, the Mayor and Council of the City of Ottawa, to bring this issue back to the table, stop the commissioning and operation of the Munster forcemain, reopen the Class EA, and see it conducted in a legal and principled manner."

STATUS REPORT FROM RVA PRESIDENT:

-------- Original Message --------

Thank you for a job well done.


In less than 12 hours in the last 24 we have collected 560 signatures. The
petition is still open until we determine in the next week or  two how to
best ensure it gets on council's agenda.

If each RVA director takes a sheet (or two) to the street on which he or
she lives, and each active member on this distribution does the same, and
finally if our friends in Stonebridge (or anywhere else) could collect
supporting signatures from that community we could go forward with as many
as 1000 signatures. Lets go for it!

To that end, the master signature sheet is attached for your use.

Harvey Snyder
President
Richmond Village Association

RESULTS:

No response from the city of Ottawa

Richmond ignored

The Ottawa Citizen
Monday, November 29, 2004

Re: Residents win latest round in landfill battle, Nov. 24.

Richmond residents can only shake their heads about their experiences with the Munster Hamlet wastewater forcemain that passes through the aquifer serving Richmond's wells on its way to the Richmond pumping station. It appears that positions and facts that were ignored or dismissed in the anti-forcemain campaign have now been accepted in the Trail Road situation. For example, city staff support the Trail Road pipeline principally because of its lower cost; in our case, they supported the forcemain even though its installation costs were twice those of an on-site solution and operational costs over a 90-year-life cycle were similar.

A councillor argued that an on-site facility for Trail Road was more environmentally friendly; if city staff had been forthright in their forcemain presentation, they'd have said the same is true for the Munster forcemain crossing an environmentally sensitive area containing the Richmond aquifer.

The Trail Road leachate pollution is progressing at a rate of three metres a year; a forcemain rupture into the aquifer would traverse that distance in seconds. The leachate pipeline was scrapped when residents strongly objected; a large majority of Richmond people also objected to the forcemain.

So I guess if Richmond had been more politically significant or had more well-connected residents, we also might have had a similar outcome? Or does it have more to do with Barrhaven-Nepean having a councillor champion their cause?

Doug Arnold,
(Richmond)

Poor representative

The Ottawa Citizen
January 3, 2005 

Re: Residents win latest round in landfill battle, Nov. 24.

Congratulations to Councillor Jan Harder for doing what she was elected to do -- represent the people of her ward.

Due to her support, residents of Barrhaven and Stonebridge were able to stop a pipeline carrying toxic waste from running through their neighbourhoods. It was Ms. Harder, working with residents, who managed to convince other councillors to approve an on-site treatment facility at Trail Road rather than the pipeline. This is the kind of thing a councillor can do when motivated by her conscience and the people she represents.

I wish I could say we have the same support from Councillor Janet Stavinga. Unfortunately, I cannot. In my view, Ms. Stavinga has ignored the residents of Richmond and our concerns about the contamination of our water supply. We are worried that we could be facing a threat when the Munster-to-Richmond pipeline is operational.

Our shallow wells are seriously at risk, as is our health. Ms. Stavinga needs to recognize Richmond's concerns, articulated in a petition that was presented to council when we tried to convince councillors not to vote for the pipeline.

Jane Campbell,
(Richmond)

One-sided meeting

The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, December 17, 2003

At its second public information meeting about Munster Hamlet's wastewater situation, the City of Ottawa sent its best flim-flam team under the leadership of councillor Janet Stavinga to Richmond last Tuesday. The intent was to put their best spin on the city's money-wasting solution.

I say money-wasting because, even using the city's best, most favourable estimates, the sewage forcemain from Munster through the Richmond Fen wetlands, past 1,200 shallow wells, will still cost at minimum $2 million more than the alternative proposal of an onsite plant. A different engineering report that residents were given as information showed that the onsite option would cost only $3.8 million.

These forcemain cheerleaders danced around the question of additional costs for the forcemain, such as the Kanata connection and the Richmond pumping station. They refused or were unable or unprepared to answer other pointed questions about financial, environmental and health issues. Can Councillor Stavinga or Mayor Bob Chiarelli tell us what these actual costs are going to be?

Hank Helleman,
Richmond

-------- Email Letter - Sent by a Director of the Richmond Village Association-------
To:
Mayor and Councillors of the City of Ottawa,
and forwarded To:
Ottawa's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Robert Cushman

Sanity Check - Are You Listening to Yourself?

Seven thousand people living in 1200 homes in Richmond and along the route
from Munster Hamlet draw their water from the local aquifer from their
private, shallow wells. This water source is wide open and vulnerable to
lethal contamination. Yet you, as a body actually approved a plan that
pumps under pressure, the sewage from Munster Hamlet's 400 homes directly
through the water supply that Richmond residents drink from. Sewage made up
of fecal material, urine, bathwater, dishwater, blood - anything the
residents of Munster choose to rinse down the sink or flush down the
toilet.

You made this decision, knowing that there were other options - routing
the forcemain to Stittsville where the water supply is enclosed in pipes and
the responsibility of the city to maintain, or constructing a tertiary
treatment on-site plant that has been proven over and over across this
continent.

Think about it. Could you have chosen a worse solution? What you have done
is not only irrational, it is simply and fundamentally wrong. For the rest
of you - would you have done that to a community in your ward? For Janet,
you should be deeply ashamed for this assault on the well being of our
community.

May 17, 2004

Dr. Robert Cushman, MD
Medical Officer of Health
City of Ottawa
Public Health Branch
495 Richmond Road
Ottawa, ON, K2A 4A4

(Via: Email and Fax)

Dr. Cushman:

Sir, your letter is a huge disappointment in that it is devoid of any ‘medical’ rationale which would suggest an interest in protecting the health of residents of the Richmond Village area. Instead of recognizing that a communal sewage treatment system would offer the most obvious health protection, you have spent the major part of your letter "parroting" opinions of non-medical city staff, regarding their forcemain post-rupture "contingency plans", "monitoring", "notification of property owners", "supplying bottled water", "providing boil water advisories", and "keeping residents abreast of the on-going investigations".

Perhaps we have to point out to you that the SCADA Alarm System, (another often-touted contingency measure) did not detect the weeks-to-months-long leakage of the out-going Richmond forcemain, prior to its complete rupture on June 19, 2002. Had such a continuous slow leak occurred in the Richmond Village aquifer, you may well have had a more graphic example in terms of resident deaths to help you achieve the proper medical perspective in order to protect citizens regarding this current issue.

Let us remind you that the less expensive on-site treatment plant does not require any "contingency plan" in order to protect the lives of residents. It is 100% safe, in that it poses zero threat to the shallow aquifer source of drinking water for residents.

Your suggested "providing bottled water" --- coming after, potentially, several months of continuous shallow aquifer contamination--- would not protect lives, one whit, during the entire course of the undetectable slow-leak period! And, it would only be through an increased incidence of illnesses and/or deaths that such slow leaks might be discovered. Why should rate-paying citizens be relegated to the status of "canaries in coal mines", only to mask the larger problems of political/bureaucratic incompetence and self-serving greed.

This case has been reduced to two principal issues: 1.) health/safety issue by the residents, and; 2.) cost issue by the city. The highest priority issue, by far, is the health issue. Is it not reasonable, then, Dr. Cushman, (in your medical estimation), that you should serve the public interest, with its priority being "health and safety", rather than pandering to the city’s speciously contrived: cost-over-health agenda?

Worse, even, is the fact that the city’s cost-over-health agenda ---that you appear to have bought into--- is a fraud. There is clear evidence that the city falsified the true cost of the forcemain, to make the on-site options appear equal, or marginally higher, after a fictitious 90-year life-cycle extrapolation. The city’s illicit cost arguments are especially irresponsible in light of the fact that the Walkerton fiasco really has cost taxpayers over $155-million. Where is the economy in repeating that?

Also, your (non-medical) confidence in the Class Environmental Assessment (EA) process appears somewhat misguided. The Class EA process, by MOE’s own admission, is "proponent-driven" and "self-directing", and is about process. The Class EA process does not require the performance of "health-risk assessments". This is where YOU are supposed to come in. Has your office done any health-risk assessments on the city’s preferred pipe option? --- Or, in fact, does it even have any of the documentation on the project, or on all five of the ruptures, to date, that have occurred on the Richmond outflow forcemain? Since several EA process errors and city misrepresentations are now being catalogued with the MOE, it would appear that your confidence in the city’s Class EA is misplaced.

In your reference to the 2002 RVA report, you failed to mention the fact that RV Anderson opposed the conclusions of the (OMB-discounted) Conestoga-Rovers & Associates (CRA) report, by instead, recommending against the pipeline, in favour of a communal system for Munster.

Also, the city’s Environmental Advisory Committee (EAC) has clearly stated its preference for the on-site technology option over the forcemain, for reasons of environmental benefit and safety ---even though, strangely, neither you, nor any other city bureaucrats asked for its input.

Sir, abdication of your medical responsibility in your service to your political masters is simply not an acceptable fulfillment of your duty to the public interest. You cannot serve two masters well. We believe that your true duty should be to oversee the protection of health of Ottawa residents. By failing to address the legitimate concerns and fears of Richmond residents and resolving the stress and worry of ALL of the residents on shallow wells, you are already negatively affecting the health of those you are supposed to protect.

It is still not too late to order the safe on-site alternative, (recommended by three out of the four municipally-appointed engineering reviews), as the best (and lowest cost) method by which to safeguard the health and safety of the 5000-plus residents who must depend on your office, alone, for the medical expertise required to protect them.

Environmental engineering ethics, calls for "plausible worst-case scenario evaluations", of any alternatives being considered. When performed properly, these procedures tend to reduce some of the consultant-client advocacy (bias) that can otherwise drastically skew "preferred alternative" outcomes. In the case of a communal treatment plant, for example, the worst-case scenario would likely be a forced temporary shutdown, with the need for short-term storage or trucking, but no health risk. With a pressure forcemain conveying sewage through a shallow-well drawing area, the worst-case scenario of a sustained undetected sewage leak is obviously orders-of-magnitude potentially more catastrophic. The Medical Officer of Health should plainly rule on the side of caution ---in this issue--- as clearly as he would have to, in reducing risk of exposure in a SARS contamination-avoidance protocol.

In your unique capacity as Medical Officer of Health, to fail to advise the city against the selection of a pressurized forcemain, routed through the vulnerable, shallow well aquifer of close to 5000 residents, is a dereliction of your duty, more so considering that an alternative is available that does not place the public health at risk.

We trust you will review and reconsider this matter in a (plausible worst-case scenario) medical context only (as requested by the affected residents), or be held accountable by other authorities than the temporary politicians you may deem as your masters.

Yours truly,

Bruce Webster,
Director, Richmond Village Association

cc:
Dr. Sheela Basrur, Chief Medical Officer of Health, of Ontario
L. Dombrowsky, Minister, MOE