City dumps more sewage into lake;

[Spiel]

City dumps more sewage into lake; Winter's snowfall blamed for bypass increase

 

April 10, 2008

Jennifer Pritchett / thewhig.com

 

 

KINGSTO - Runoff from this past winter's heavy snowfall has forced the city to send nearly four times more untreated sewage into local waterways in the first three months of 2008 than for all of 2007.

 

So far this year, the City of Kingston has discharged roughly 345 million litres of raw waste, compared to 89 million in 2007.

 

Most of that untreated sewage went directly into Lake Ontario, from which Kingston and dozens of other municipalities draw their drinking water.

 

This spike in water pollution comes just weeks after the city announced that 2007 was the best year in its history, in terms of the amount of raw waste the municipality regularly sends into area watercourses.

 

Jim Keech, president and chief executive officer of Utilities Kingston, blamed the increase in 2008 on the sharp rise in snowfall this winter and the relatively fast melt in March.

 

"Last year was the best year we'd had in our history and I guess what we need to do is see where we come out for the remainder of this year," he said. "The weather can change us drastically."

 

However, it's difficult to determine exactly what impact snowfall had on Kingston's sewer system because there is no way of knowing precisely how much snow fell on the city this winter. Currently, there is no official collection of snowfall data within the city.

 

The City of Kingston tracks rainfall, but Environment Canada's nearest weather station that collects snowfall data is in Hartington, located roughly a 20-minute drive north of the municipality.

 

Based on weather data from Hartington, the snowiest winter on record since 1967 was 276.3 centimetres in the winter of 1970-71, compared to 246.5 centimetres so far this year. Last year's total snowfall was 75.8 centimetres. The average snowfall each winter in Hartington is 171.9 centimetres.

 

Environment Canada is expected to open a weather station in Kingston later this year.

 

"The amount of snow we've had on the ground this year far exceeds anything we've seen in the last 10 to 15 years maybe," said Keech.

 

Runoff from roads during heavy rain or during the annual spring melt overloads Kingston's aged sewer system. Its combined sewer pipes, which carry both runoff from roads and raw sewage, aren't able to move the waste to the Ravensview sewage-treatment plant fast enough. The city's longtime practice of purging the raw waste into the waterways, known as bypassing, is an effort to prevent the refuse from backing up into people's homes and toilets.

 

Kingston has spent roughly $160 million on known trouble spots in the city's sewer system and has significantly decreased the amount of untreated waste purged from those areas over the past five years. Keech said that without these upgrades, the volume of untreated waste that would have gone into Lake Ontario this spring because of the heavy snowfall would have been much more.

 

"Even though we are bypassing, the amount we're bypassing would be quite small compared to what it was before," he said. "The amount is high [this year], but I still think it's positive."

 

Keech also said the majority of the raw waste Kingston has discharged into waterways this year has come from smaller sewer pipes that weren't monitored before the fall of 2006.

 

At that time, the city installed new ultrasonic equipment at 11 of the combined sewer manholes that direct the foul liquid into the watercourse. These devices, which cost $10,000 each, have enabled city staff to collect data on the amount of waste going into the waterways that was never before tracked.

 

As many as 18 other such pipes remain unmonitored.

 

In an effort to prevent future discharges, Utilities Kingston, which oversees the city's sewers, has now turned its attention to these trouble areas of the system that weren't previously monitored.

 

Late last month, the province handed down $7.682 million to the City of Kingston to continue the ongoing retrofit work to its sewer system.

 

The city is also leasing some equipment from Texas that will clean some of Kingston's sewer pipes during the coming year. This clean-up work is anticipated to increase the capacity of some of the city's older pipes.