Two sewage spills in four months, at the Richmond Conservation Area

For the last three years, City of Ottawa operations staff have been working to take over the Richmond Conservation Area and make it into a sewage works. The conservation area contains the Richmond Lagoons, abandoned for approximately fifteen years after the construction of the Richmond Forcemain.  In the fall of 2001, having sent the Ministry of Environment incomplete information on its own environmental assessment for the project, the City was allowed to extend the Richmond Forcemain into Cell C of the Richmond Lagoons. Cell C is the only cell of the lagoons concerning which there is no evidence that it does not satisfy Ministry of Environment standards for temporary sewage storage. Nonetheless, to be used for sewage storage, the existing pipes to other cells, and to the Jock River, must be closed. This is what the city failed to do when it bypassed untreated sewage into Cell C last fall. The pipe to the adjacent, substandard Cell B remained open, causing a sewage spill. The spill was reported on December 4. City staff had to pump the sewage back into Cell C, and undertook to block the pipe to Cell B. But apparently staff learned nothing from its initial blunder. It improperly blocked the pipe, and during the spring thaw, another spill occurred. It was discovered on March 30, 2002. Two spills in four months! The sewage was supposed to have been removed from Cell C last fall, but the city did not act on its promise to do so.
Nor has it made any effort to clean Cell C. Last December, before the first snowfall, many disposed items (unbefitting a conservation area) were still floating in the conservation area.

The City’s bizarre plan to store sewage in a conservation area is proving to be nothing more than a recipe for destroying any conservation potential that the area has.  BACKGROUND ON NEW PLAN

How can staff be so consistently careless, and where in all of this is Ward Councillor, Janet Stavinga, who sits on the management committee for the conservation area?

It is our understanding that the City of Ottawa Operations Department was contacted by the local media regarding this spill. The media was told that there was in fact no spill, but merely a leak of groundwater from Cell C to Cell B. In fact, since the city has never removed the wastewater that it bypassed to Cell C last fall, any ground or surface water that flows into C is considered to be contaminated by wastewater, i.e. sewage. We don't know if the consequences of this spill were serious. No water testing was done. But whether the matter is serious or not, the incident remains a testament to city operations staff's carelessness in managing wastewater and protecting our streams and rivers.