Councillor questions delay in reporting sewage spill near Petrie beach

An Ottawa city councillor is asking why it took almost two years for city council to find out about the accidental discharge of more than a billion litres of raw sewagethat likely caused the contamination of an east end beach on the Ottawa River.

Employees in the city's waste water division knew about the sewage system valve malfunctionat Keefer Street right after it occurred in July 2006. That summer, abnormally high bacterial counts at the Petrie Island beach led to 45 "no swimming" advisories, but no one knew what caused the problem until this week.

On Tuesday, Cumberland ward Coun. Rob Jellett said he still has questions about the incident and how it was reported.

"Why did it take two years? And is this happening on other parts of the city on other issues?" he asked at a news conference Tuesday. "Those are the kinds of things that we have to follow up on and see ... what protocols are in place to make sure that this isn't going to occur again, not just at Petrie, but anywhere in the city."

The valve at the sewage plant near Lower Duck Island is designed to relieve pressure after a heavy rainstorm by allowing a small amount of sewage toflow into the river before closing again.

Normally, E. coli levels spike after heavy rainfalls, but subside after a day or two. They remained high at Petrie Island for two weeks in summer 2006.

On Tuesday, the City of Ottawa confirmed that the sewagevalve malfunctioned for 15 days in July and August 2006.

1 billion extra litres of raw sewage

Dixon Weir, director of water and waste water services, said if the valve had been working properly, 200 million litres of raw, untreatedsewage would havepoured into the Ottawa River. Instead, six times that amount,1.2 billion litres,were discharged into the waterway.

Weir said staff in his division notified the Ministry of the Environment. However, they did not inform other branches of the city.

In 2007, the city commissioned a $50,000 study to figure out the source of the problem at the Petrie Island beach.

The valve malfunction was only revealed this week, when a volunteer group that runs a nature centre on Petrie Island learned about it during a tour of the sewage plant.

Al Tweddle, chair of Friends of Petrie Island, said during that tour, an official mentioned that the valve was stuck open for two weeks, leading to the high E. coli bacteria counts.

The city said Tuesday thatnew procedures have been put in place to check the overflow valves at the plant and automated systems are being installed to make sure this sort ofspill doesn't happen again.

Meanwhile, Orleans councillor Bob Monette said the revelation about the sewage spill was good news.

"The residents of Orleans and the residents of Ottawa realize that Petrie Island is no worse than any other beach," he said Tuesday at the news conference.

When questions started to fly at the director of waste water services, Monette grabbed the microphone and closed off questions.

MPP unhappy about bad press for beach

Ottawa-Orleans MPP Phil McNeely, a long-time champion of the beach, said he's glad the truth is finally out, but isn't pleased about how the information was released.

"We've got a lot of bad press for our Petrie Island Beach over this," he said. "I'm not after whoever caused the error but at least we should be straightforward enough to come out with the facts."

Petrie Island is the city's newest beach and cost roughly $2.5 million to build. Its swimming area first opened in 2006, the year of the sewage spill.

An Environment Canada study conductedin 2007called the sand at Petrie Island Beach "a reservoir for E. coli," and an editorial published in the Ottawa Citizen newspaperinMarchcompared going to Petrie Island to taking a "walk along the edge of a toilet bowl."

The water at Ottawa's beaches are tested daily and the beaches are closed if E. coli counts are over 200 per 100 millilitres of water tested or if they are over 100 per 100 ml for two or more days in a row.

In April, councillors asked city staff to look for ways to keep human feces out of the Ottawa River, even though such efforts would likely cost millions of dollars.