17 August, 2005
Ms. Winsome Cain, Investigator
Complaint Services
Ombudsman Ontario
125 Queens Park
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2C7

Tel: (416) 586-3300
Fax: 1-866-863-2560

Dear Ms. Cain,

In reference to the file opened by your office, thank you for providing us with the official response from the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) under cover of your letter dated 26 July 2005. Your office’s willingness to hear our position in this matter is truly appreciated and we are hopeful that you can apply the required influence to finally have our concerns dealt with appropriately. The Deputy Minister of the Environment’s 21 July 2005 letter to you is an instance of what may be described as the MOE’s standard response to the numerous complaints it has received in relation to this Class EA. It has provided a selective chronology of events that occurred as part of the Class EA, without addressing the outstanding issues that reveal the proponent’s failure to satisfy to the requirements of the Environmental Assessment Act (EAA).

In what follows, although we will focus on a number of irregularities of process under the EAA, we would like you to keep the following question at the forefront of your mind:

"Does it make sense to directly route a pipe containing high-pressure, untreated sewage, and human pathogens that have been implicated in serious illnesses and fatalities, through a community whose only source of potable water occurs in the ground where the pipe is laid, especially when a much less expensive alternative which poses no threat whatsoever is available and being used in neighbouring communities of the same City?"

It is our contention that, had the EA process been properly followed in this case, the outcome would have definitively answered the above question in the negative. By reviewing, one by one, the outstanding issues, which the Deputy Minister’s letter fails to address, we endeavor to convince you that this contention has far greater support than you have been led to believe.

To begin with, we would like to make you aware of the fact that both public and professional opinion has gone against the alternative that has been implemented by the City of Ottawa.

A number of other community and environmental organizations support the RVA’s position. This includes the Friends of the Jock River, the Greenspace-Alliance of Canada’s Capital, Ottawa Citizens against Pollution by Sewage, the Ottawa Office of the Sierra Club of Canada, the Munster Citizen’s Watchdog Committee and the City of Ottawa’s own Environmental Advisory Committee.

Furthermore, the RVA’s position has been corroborated by one of the province’s most prominent environmental lawyers, Mr. Rod Northey, who, after considerable research, stated that the manner in which the Class EA was conducted involves illegalities in relation to the requirements of the EAA. Mr. Northey’s views are elaborated upon below.

Over the last decade, the proponent has been involved in a series of environmental assessments, technical studies and Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearings related to this matter. Significantly, the recommendations of these studies and hearings are at odds with one another. The original 1996 Environmental Study Report (ESR), by Totten Sims Hubicki Associates, found strongly in favour of rehabilitating the existing on-site system, rejecting a forcemain on grounds that it would cost too much and it was the alternative involving the greatest risk. Another consultant, Conestoga-Rovers & Associates, was subsequently brought in to investigate on-site options that were based on newer technology, only to suddenly and inexplicably introduce the pipeline alternative in the middle of the process of evaluating bids against an RFP that called exclusively for innovative on-site treatment facilities. The Conestoga-Rovers & Associates’ study, which has been adopted as an addendum to the original ESR, found in favour of a forcemain, with the preferred alternative being that it connect to the Richmond Pumping Station. Despite growing community opposition to this "preferred alternative" and serious questions about procedural errors, several Part II Order requests were denied by the Minister of the Environment.

An OMB hearing sat on the matter and found the 1999 Conestoga-Rovers & Associates’ addendum inadequate, ordering the City to hire an independent consultant to re-evaluate the alternatives. The resulting study by R.V. Anderson, released in late 2002, rejected the pipeline option and advised the City to conduct a competition between the two on-site options that had submitted bids in response to the 1999 RFP. Instead, the City ignored the OMB proceedings and associated outcomes entirely, and approached the MOE on the basis of the discredited 1999 ESR addendum. It is on this basis that the MOE has allowed the project to proceed to Phase 5 of the Class EA process.

In the second paragraph of the Deputy Minister’s letter, it states that, as part of the Class EA, "consultation with the public [is] incorporated into the planning and development of these types of projects." Be that as it may, the question which must be considered is: "When evaluated against the standards given in the Municipal Class EA 2000 (MCEA), the applicable regulation of the EAA, is the City’s consultation strategy found to be adequate?" We believe that the answer must be given in the negative. This answer is based on consideration of the phasing of the proponent’s public consultation strategy, which specifically sought the input of Richmond residents, and other residents along the pipeline route, only after Conestoga-Rovers & Associates selected the pipeline alternative as the preferred alternative. The MCEA says:

"The proponent should seek to involve potentially affected parties as early as possible, so that their concerns can be identified and addressed before irreversible decisions are made. . . . Potentially affected parties include technical agencies, the public, property owners, interest groups and other municipalities." (MCEA p. A-2, our italics)

The City did not meet this standard in undertaking the mandatory public consultations during Phase 2 of the project. In fact, the past president of the RVA, Mr. Ted Brown, was told by the municipal representative, Mrs. Janet Stavinga, that the views of Richmond residents were not being sought because she did not want to cause unnecessary alarm before a final decision was made to pipe sewage to Richmond.

The first opportunity for two of the three stakeholder communities – i.e. Richmond and Stittsville - to participate in public consultation was for the route selection. At that time only one Stittsville and one Richmond representative sat on the Public Liaison Committee (PLC) in contrast to three Munster and one Heron Lakes Estates members. We believe that this constitutes biased representation on the PLC. Furthermore, when the municipality finally sought the input of Richmond residents through the PLC, it seemingly forgot an integral characteristic of the Class EA process:

"[It] is not necessarily sequential. It can be an iterative process whereby the results of one step may necessitate reevaluation of a previous step." (MCEA p. A-24).

This is not how the preferred solution was presented to Richmond residents, or residents of other potentially affected communities. Members of the PLC for the route selection were required to avow their support for the pipeline alternative. However, they should have been mandated to assess the concerns of their respective communities for the purpose of deciding whether the route should be to Richmond, Stittsville, one of the three other alternatives or whether the process should undergo an iteration back to the stage of assessing wastewater treatment alternatives. By not including the latter possibility and by failing to consult Richmond in the earliest stages of Phase 2, the proponent effectively ensured that Richmond would not be able to provide input on the full range of alternatives to the one that would affect it most. In summary, the City’s consultation strategy did not allow Richmond residents to have a say in the selection of the technology, only in the selection of the pipeline route.

The failure to properly identify and adequately consult stakeholders "as early as possible" has resulted in the interests and public good of an entire community being ignored. This amounts to more than 5000 people including the residents of Richmond and those along the 11km pipeline route to Richmond, whose potable water supply is completely unprotected.

Phase 1 of the Class EA process is intended to accomplish the identification of the problem or opportunity that the Class EA will address. In undertaking to achieve this end, a proponent is prohibited from "piecemealing" a project, i.e., attempting to break up a larger project into smaller component parts, with each part addressed separately. Mr. Rod Northey’s research into the Munster Treatment Facility Expansion/Upgrade Class EA focuses on Phase 1 compliance issues, and concludes that this Class EA and another Class EA, the Richmond Pumping Station and Forcemain Upgrade, were piecemealed.

Mr. Northey concludes the following:

"The Munster-Richmond project does not appear to comply with Phases 1 and 2 of the Class EA unless, somehow, the project assessment displaces both Master Plans; however, if the project assessment does have this power, there is a further problem with the Class EA: the present project appears to be at odds with 1996 TSH problem statement which addresses Munster only, not Richmond, and thus does not comply with Phase 1 of the Class EA and no aspect of the subsequent 1999 Addendum or terms of reference suggest that it amends Phase 1 of the TSH Report. Instead, all subsequent documents seem to advise that the 1999 study addresses Phase 2 of the Class EA process."

He further concludes:

On the basis of our current review, we also conclude that the approach of CRA to expand the project from a Munster-only project to a Munster-Richmond project is an example of  piecemealing and is therefore contrary to the Class EA and EA Act.

This is what the RVA expected. The Conestoga-Rovers & Associates addendum contains a 12 August 1998 letter from Mr. Adrien Comeau to the project manager, Mr. Stephen Forestell, indicating that addition of Munster’s sewage to Richmond’s Pumping Station and Forcemain system will increase occurrences of flows exceeding system capacity from once every two years to one to two times per year. At this time the Richmond Pumping Station and Forcemain Upgrade Class EA was in Phase 2, evaluating solutions to nothing other than the problem of flows exceeding system capacity. The Munster Treatment Facility Expansion/Upgrade Class EA was also in Phase 2, evaluating alternative forcemain routes to solve the sewage treatment problem in Munster. According to the Municipal Class EA, the proponent had a responsibility to review and confirm the status of both projects and if "the problem as originally defined [in both EA’s was] no longer valid" redefine the problem statement (MCEA, pp. A-28, A-30). The problem statement for any project has to be developed to prevent piecemealing the project into component parts, with each being treated as a separate project (MCEA, p. A-25). Although both Class EA’s had the same project manager (in fact they have had a succession of common project managers) no redefinition of the project problem was done to prevent piecemealing.

The City of Ottawa and the MOE have failed to acknowledge the limitations of the technology required for the preferred alternative identified by Conestoga-Rovers & Associates. The City’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system is of particular concern, given that it is known to be unable to detect leaks resulting from cracks in the forcemain. This fact has been brought to the attention of the MOE, and no response to the concern has been forthcoming in over a year. There are also serious questions concerning the material used for the forcemain. At no time throughout the Class EA process has the City or the MOE proven certification or issued any reports that detail rigourous testing to realistic, long-life environmental exposure of this plastic piping material under the pressures and flows to which it is expected to be subjected.

Since the 1999 addendum was completed, information has become available concerning the cracking and eventual rupturing of the Richmond to Glen Cairn forcemain, downstream of the Munster to Richmond forcemain. The evaluation of the cause of the two ruptures in this forcemain, which occurred during 2001 and 2002, concluded, "pressurized liquid and sand/silt escaping the system through a crack eroded the plastic material [of the forcemain pipe] in a fan shape, likely over the span of several weeks or months." The existing SCADA system failed to detect the crack and resulting leak. This information was released in August 2003, with the David McManus Engineering Ltd. – Environmental Hydraulics Group Inc. Hydraulic Transient Analysis of the Richmond Pump Station and Force Main Break Investigation. At this time, the Munster Hamlet Wastewater Treatment System Expansion/Upgrade Class EA had already entered Phase 5.

A review of the documents produced during Phases 1 to 3 of the Class EA demonstrates that the possibility of such long-term leakage from the Munster to Richmond forcemain was not addressed, either because the pipeline alternative was rejected, as in the original ESR, or because it was erroneously believed that the proponent’s SCADA system would readily detect leakage from the forcemain.

Conestoga-Rovers & Associates’ addendum acknowledges that Richmond obtains most of its potable water supply from private, shallow wells. It also acknowledges that wells without water-tight casings within at least 30m of the planned force main, and with a minimally thick clay overburden, will be "a concern" in case of a leak in the pipeline. It concludes, however, that because of Richmond’s clay overburden "Richmond wells would be at minimal risk from short-term pipeline failure, if it were to occur." It dismisses the possibility of long-term failure and leakage with the following statement: "[L]eakage can be readily detectable through pipeline instrumentation and control. ... Therefore, the likelihood for sewage leakage to a potable water supply drawing from a shallow or deep aquifer is low." On the basis of this statement, no evaluation of potential impacts from long-term leaks is given in the addendum.

The new information provided in the Hydraulic Transient Analysis of the Richmond Pump Station and Force Main Break Investigation demonstrates that long-term leakage is a risk to Richmond’s potable water supply that was not assessed during the Munster Hamlet Wastewater Treatment System Expansion/Upgrade Class EA. The proponent’s SCADA system failed to detect a pressurized leak for several weeks or months. The leak was only discovered because transient hydraulic pressure eventually ruptured the force main. Therefore the risk of long-term leakage cannot be dismissed, and the assessment of public health concerns during the Munster Hamlet Wastewater Treatment System Expansion/Upgrade Class EA was incomplete.

Despite the work that has been undertaken by volunteers of the RVA to make our case, our concerns have thus far been ignored. We have not embarked on this journey lightly and we do it for no other reason than to protect our potable water supply and to assure the health and survival of our community. At all times, it has been our position that it does not make sense to route a high pressure, waste-filled pipe through the same ground from which we draw our potable water. We have attempted, in the foregoing, to demonstrate where non-compliances with the EAA by the proponent, with the concurrence of the MOE, has resulted in an unacceptable threat to our community. We are seeking a moratorium on the operation of the Munster to Richmond pipeline and an opportunity to open a new EA for the treatment of the Munster Hamlet’s sewage. We ask you to find in favour of our arguments and require the MOE to act accordingly. If you wish additional clarification of our position, please do not hesitate to contact the undersigned or Mr. Harvey Snyder at (613) 838-3572.

Yours truly,

Mr. Bruce Webster

Vice-President
Richmond Village Association
P.O. Box 492
Richmond, Ontario
K0A 2Z0

Tel: (613) 838-2056