Ugly sore  ...on a beautiful river
Ottawa is using "dilution as its solution to pollution".

The City of Ottawa should become a "good corporate citizen" to
its downstream neighbours, and consider that, "We are all downstream".

Photo by Dan Brunton   - August 1991

Upstream view of picturesque Ottawa River ...and of Ottawa's poorly treated sewage being discharged into river (foreground).

Ottawa's "Secondary" sewage treatment process
is no longer acceptable

In addition to Ottawa's ongoing discharge of inadequately treated wastewater effluent, (plus, environmentally destructive Chlorine), (see above photo), more than 5,000,000 liters of untreated, RAW sewage was recently by-passed directly into the Ottawa River, and can happen at any time, due to various "event occurrences".

The City's entire peripheral sewage collection system ---from Carp, Hazeldean, Richmond, Stittsville, Ottawa South, and Ottawa East--- with its growing frequency of forcemain breaks, clogged collectors, noxious gas emissions, increased pollutant-volumes, and  profligate spending that goes with it: signifies profound failure at every level of Ottawa's wastewater-treatment-infrastructure management and administration, with respect to: VISION, PLANNING, DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, OPERATION and MAINTENANCE.

In short, Ottawa's Infrastructure Department has proven itself incapable of handling long-distance conveyance of sewage from the outlying areas ...and, sadly: it lacks sufficient collective expertise to realize that it is not environmentally sustainable to continue trying to do so.   (Related Link)

With dependency on a single centralized Treatment Plant, (ROPEC), Ottawa is subject to an increasing frequency of conveyance problems, treatment deficiencies and system failures, (leading to routine, raw sewage bypasses) ...and the fading likelihood of ever achieving tertiary treatment quality output.

What sort of example should the Nation's Capital City be setting? Why do we let Ottawa's politicians and bureaucrats ...continue to make this city the second worst* municipal polluter of water in Ontario?
(*Source: Pollution Watch. See Link, below.)

(The City NOW, even wants to transfer all of its Trail Road Landfill leachate, by pipeline, to (ROPEC), where its toxic chemical cocktail would pass right-through ROPEC, to the Ottawa River. Meanwhile, instead of demanding that the City use on-site treatment --AT TRAIL ROAD--- to contain the problem, the Ontario MOE looks the other way ---granting "allowable exceedences" to the City, to transport leachate from Trail Road, currently, by truck. When it comes to dealing with the City of Ottawa, the local office of the Ontario MOE is very good at mimicking death ...which will be the virtual state fish will be in, below ROPEC's outfall sewer, if MOE permits continuance of this environmental travesty.) 

Instead of moving in its present retrograde direction, Ottawa should be following the leadership of other Canadian cities, like Calgary, that have already converted to tertiary treatment of their wastewater effluent.