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Ottawa's Wastewater Woes... FROM BAD TO WORSE: Ottawa has a wastewater CRISIS ... and it's rapidly getting worse. Ottawa's wastewater treatment plant at Gloucester, has already caused the (relatively non-industrial) Nation's Capital, to receive the unenviable status as the "Second Worse Polluter in Ontario". (See: Pollution Watch Survey: ROPEC). Trail Road: Now, Ottawa wants to add to the 8 supertanker loads of Trail Road Landfill leachate, it hauls to the Gloucester treatment plant. (The Trail Road leachate is highly toxic. It exceeds the MOE guidelines for wastewater toxicity limits. It is a particularly incidious solution to add to the treatment plant, because most of its toxic components are passed straight into the Ottawa River, untreated.) The City plans to send an estimated eighty (80) supertanker trucks a day, for at least five years, of landfill leachate, and leachate-contaminated groundwater to the Gloucester Plant. (See: Trail Road) Munster: Ottawa also wants to transport raw sewage from distant communities such as Munster (roughly 70 km from the Gloucester treatment plant), to superficially treat it, and dump it into the Ottawa River with 30 times the Phosphorus per liter as a local treatment plant. All this, at a capital cost that is 5 times the local plant, and has ongoing, operational and maintenance costs that are at least 45% higher than that of an on-site (Munster) plant. And by transferring the wastewater from the Munster aquifer to the Ottawa River, the local environment (and it's habitat) will lose a valuable resource, (the clean, extracted water that could be supplied by a local treatment process).
Richmond: The Environmental Assessment Act provisions were knowingly broken by City engineers, and their high paid advisors, thus placing Richmond residents in danger of life-threatening water contamination, in the event that such forcemain is ever put into use. A perfectly sound on-site alternative would have avoided such public endangerment at less than 1/5th the cost that has already been spent on the inferior forcemain alternative. (See Richmond) South Ottawa Collector: The failure of this
$38-Million mega-project
---just
3 1/2 years after it was built---
and its
subsequent $17-Million repair estimate)
epitomizes the sheer incompetence exhibited throughout the City's present
Wastewater Management policies and practices. Tip of the Iceberg: The City's propensity for making all the wrong moves, whether it be, installing mega-pipelines (such as the Walkley Collector), or constructing extended forcemains into rural area, using lagoons for solids retention (as planned for Munster): has to be stopped. The City's entire, 'Rue-Goldberg', peripheral sewage collection system ---from Carp, Hazeldean Richmond Ottawa South, and Ottawa East: with its increasing frequency of forcemain breaks, clogged collectors, noxious gas emission problems, and pollution increases: indicate failure at every level of the wastewater treatment infrastructure, with respect to: VISION, PLANNING, DESIGN, and IMPLEMENTATION, OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE. In addition to Ottawa's ongoing discharge of inadequately treated wastewater effluent ...over 5,000,000 gallons of RAW sewage was by-passed directly into the Ottawa River last year. Is this where we ---as the Nation's Capital--- want to be going? THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE (DRASTICALLY ...and SOON): The time is rapidly approaching when Ottawa will be forced to meet future Federal and Provincial requirements to produce effluent of "tertiary" quality. This will only be achieved by Ottawa following its own Official Plan policy of "Treating pollution at its source whenever practical". Only when Ottawa's wastewater infrastructure planning is based upon use of the highest standards, (high technology), and on-site treatment models, will the Capital City of Canada begin to live up to its modern responsibilities, relating to stewardship of the environment. The scandal of this whole issue, is that the high-tech treatment technologies ---which can produce the desired tertiary quality effluent--- can, more often than not, do it far less expensively than the centralized, mega-treatment plant-approach. CONCLUSIONS:
2.) In the event that the City selects one of the lagoon-dependent options, there would be significant added costs and risks associated with the permanent, on-going requirement to introduce vast quantities of insecticide (such as malathion), or other compounds, into these lagoons. Constant application of insecticide compounds, to lagoons, is particularly unwise and worrisome, because the lagoon contents would be quickly dispersed though the environment, via groundwater to the Jock River, (by the Snowfluent process), or , directly into the Ottawa River (by pipeline) ...without any insecticide treatment or removal, in either case. 3.) By ignoring the expressed wishes of Munster and area residents to eliminate the lagoons altogether, the City would be missing a premier opportunity to provide the community ---at substantially lower cost--- with an aesthetically enhanced community setting, without lagoon odours to contend with, or elevated health risk from either the West Nile Virus, or insecticide contamination. 4.) By treating the wastewater locally, the polished effluent would benefit the local environment, especially the Jock River during dry periods, instead of being transferred out of the watershed. 5.) By eliminating the lagoons, Munster could have the high tech, on-site treatment plant, that conforms to the Official Plan, that the RMOC Council originally ordered, and what Residents asked for in the first place. (See: Last clause of the Munster petition to Chiarelli): CLICK HERE 6.) By proceeding with the local solution, a pipeline-breakage risk to 140 shallow wells along the pipeline route, would be completely eliminated. 7.) Any risk of damage to the Richmond Fen could be avoided, by a local treatment solution for Munster. 8.) Sewer capacity issues for Richmond, caused by Munster could be eliminated, by Munster having its own treatment plant. 9.) Valuable time could still be saved by eliminating the pipeline option, which still has most of the design work ahead of it. The onsite option is a 'turn-key' option. 10.) Huge Capital cost savings, and Operation and Maintenance cost savings could be realized by utilizing on-site treatment, instead of conveyance by pipeline.
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