Sewage spills to be reported to Ottawa public health

Raw sewage discharges into the Ottawa River from Ottawa's water treatment plants will be reported to the city'spublic health department and copied to council in wake of a spill that was only linked to the contamination of a city beach two years later.

City manager Kent Kirkpatrick said at a meeting Thursday that he himself just found out about a 1.2 billion-litre raw sewage spill in the summer of 2006 that waspublicly revealed this week.

It is believed the spill, caused by a faulty valve at a sewage plant, is responsible for E. coli contamination at the Petrie Island beach in the city's east end that led to 45 "no swimming" advisories that year and later a costly study to figure out what had caused the problem.

Kirkpatrick said that at least four supervisors at the City of Ottawa knew about the massive raw sewage discharge and reported it to the Ministry of the Environment, but theydid not inform the department of health or council because that was not part of their standard protocol.

"We think we know enough at this point in time that we're able to identify what we need to do differently," Kirkpatrick added.

A full report on the incident will be issued in a few weeks, he said.

Cumberland Coun. Rob Jellett said he is satisfied with the answers he has received about the incident and he doesn't believe it indicates a wider communication problem.

"I don't think this is an endemic problem or a systematic problem for the entire bureaucracy," he said.

The sewage discharge in July and August 2006 waspublicizedthis week after a volunteer group that runs a nature centre on Petrie Island learned about it from an official during a tour of the Robert O. Pickard water treatment plant and informed the media.

Avalve was stuck open for two weeks following a storm, allowing raw sewage to spill into the river upstream from the beach.