Petitcodiac group draws attention to sewage going into river

Video of raw sewage being discharged into the Peticodiac Riverhas stirred things up in Moncton.

The Petitcodiac Watershed Allianceposted the video on social media on Wednesday of sewage entering the river through two of the city's discharge points.

Christine McLaughlan, the executive director of the environmental organization, says the video reached about 15,000 people online.

"I think it was a big shock for a lot of people," said McLaughlan.

"The wastewater treatment facility or TransAqua gets overloaded with water and they can't handle all that water, so what they have to do is discharge everything or it would damage their plant.

"So that's what we're seeing, raw sewage and storm water coming out of those pipes."

About 25 millimetres of rain is all it takes for raw sewage to bypass the city's water treatment facility and go straight into the river.

"But there's a lot people can do at home to help stop that from happening," said McLaughlan.

"Limit the amount of water that you're discharging into the facility so if you can save doing your laundry another day. Just a few things we can do to reduce the water going to the facility."

The system is doing what it should do.- Bernard LeBlanc, TransAqua general manager

TransAqua is the Moncton area's wastewater commission.

Bernard LeBlanc, TransAqua's general manager, says old infrastructure in Moncton's downtown core is the reason for the raw discharge.

"The system is doing what it should do," said LeBlanc.

"If we didn't have those type of overflows what would typically happen is people's basements would start flooding."

TransAqua is required to develop a plan to handle sewer overflow by 2016.

"We could install a screen or baffle to try and capture solids when there's this type of event so we could treat those," said LeBlanc.

TransAqua is also required to give secondary treatment to wastewater by 2020. The estimated cost of implementing secondary treatment for wastewater is about $75 million.