Editorial Comment by Tom Davey
I have often thought that if underground sewer and watermain networks were as visible as potholes, the environmental industry might stop being the orphan of provincial and federal funding.
Environmental infrastructure is underground, and very much out of funding mindsets. That is until now. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund has issued a scathing report which states that Canada's sewage treatment systems are a national disgrace. At the time of writing, the Canadian Water & Wastewater Association was taking action to respond to the accusations. Sierra's simplistic high school type report cards rated municipalities as A, B, C, D, E, or F. Such rating methodologies have many imperfections, as some lower grades are given on subjective criteria.
As H.L. Mencken said: "For every complex problem there is a simple answer usually the wrong one." Ecosystems are delicate entities not easily assessed by simple (but extensively documented) alphabetic ratings. Thorough ecosystem studies involve a huge array of disciplines including hydrology, toxicology, epidemiology, etiology, lymnology, oceanography, analytical chemistry, and civil engineering to name a few.
But this scathing criticism might even be a blessing in disguise. Until this report, the public had no concept of how well, or how poorly their municipal environmental facilities were performing. It was all too easy for local politicians to keep taxes low by ignoring recommended infrastructure repair and replacement protocols, or worse still, letting price be the determining factor for both engineering designers and equipment suppliers on treatment facilities.
As our cover story reports, Winnipeg, for example, has undertaken a comprehensive asset management strategy which will continuously update the most cost-effective rehabilitation approach for the overall system at sustainable funding levels. There are many other commendable initiatives which cannot be simply assessed by A,B,C,D, E, and F report cards.
But that being said, the Sierra Report, which made front page news across Canada and was also broadcast on several national TV channels, gave some gut wrenching imagery of untreated sewage which surely should demolish the political apathy which has made environmental remediation a poor relation in funding.
Sierra's second National Sewage Report Card, released August 18, claimed that many Canadian cities continue to dump massive amounts of untreated sewage into the nation's waterways, some in violation of permits that are supposed to protect the environment.
It claimed that over one trillion litres of untreated or partially treated sewage is dumped into Canada's rivers, lakes and oceans each year by some of the 21 cities surveyed. This massive amount of waste would cover the entire 7,800 kilometre length of the Trans-Canada highway to a depth of nearly 20 metres.
"Although there has been some substantial progress in some cities over the past five years, the lack of discernible progress in many cities is alarming," the new report says. "Of the 21 cities documented in this report, five (Victoria, Saint John, Halifax, St. John's and Dawson City) dump a combined total of 365 million litres of untreated sewage directly into the nation's rivers, lakes and seas every day. Eleven other cities dump an average of 437 million litres of untreated sewage per day through by-passes and combined sewer overflows."
These data were presented with an impractical, but quite striking, aquatic metaphor which was exquisitely and appropriately targeted at the very seat of our senior government. Collectively, "this flow of untreated sewage water, human excrement, grease, motor oil, paint thinner, antifreeze and other substances containing toxic synthetic chemicals would fill the main chamber of the House of Commons every three-and-a-half minutes." This led me to the thought that if detention times could be extended during long-winded debates, there could be aeration treatment potential here.
The report's other findings are not at all funny:
Apart from turning The Commons into a treatment facility, the report says there are legal remedies there to stop the damage caused by preventable pollution sources. "Under The Federal Fisheries Act, discharge of substances deleterious to fish into fish-bearing waters is a major offence punishable by fines of up to $1 million and/or imprisonment. Many municipalities are chronic offenders, yet charges are rarely laid," the report says.
What I find interesting is that governments say they can ill afford funds to remediate poor, or build new treatment facilities. Yet the value of lost fish catches and shellfish, as well as the negative effect on human health, certainly outweigh the costs involved in upgrading treatment facilities.
I await the CWWA response with interest. If things are so bad, a great deal of blame can be laid on Federal, Provincial and Regional agencies for underfunding. If nothing else, the Sierra Report has drawn attention to some serious problems. The professionals in environmental engineering could for a change benefit from this negative publicity.