Council has quietly abandoned the clean-up of widespread fecal contamination flowing into local streams despite a successful corrective program that has operated for the last two years. Citizen groups originally exposed the problem of illegal hookups of bathrooms to creeks via storm pipes that resulted in provincial cleanup orders more than 15 years ago.
Recommendations to make the cleanup effort permanent went to council’s public works committee in mid-November but were shifted to the general issues committee after mountain councillor Tom Jackson objected to the staff report. At the latter committee, the full roster of councillors avoided voting for or against the recommendations by simply deciding “to receive” them – effectively killing the initiative.
“Sanitary sewer lateral cross connections describe a condition whereby sanitary waste from homes and businesses discharge into the city’s storm sewer systems and subsequently into downstream watercourses,” explains the report accompanying the recommendations to make the program permanent. “Cross connections are relatively common and constitute a threat to the quality of receiving waters.”
This “sewer lateral cross connection” program began in 2009 after three years of testing outfalls into city creeks and five more trying to determine the sources of the bacterial contamination, but even when it began trying to fix the problems it was hampered by the lack of a budget or dedicated staff. That changed in 2014 when councillors were convinced to fund two temporary full-time people to ramp up the search for and remediation of illegally connected pipes that funnel sanitary waste into creeks.
“The accelerated program was fully implemented between September 2015 and August 2016, and has exceeded the 65% increase in productivity that was desired by council,” staff say. “The program has been highly successful, resulting in approximately 112,000 litres of sewage each day being redirected from city watercourses and the natural environment and into the city’s wastewater treatment facilities (equivalent to 40.1 million litres annually, or the volume of 16.4 Olympic swimming pools).”
To compare, the first five years of the work found just 131 cross connections and fixed 113, while nearly as much as has been accomplished in the last two years with dedicated staff. Seventy pipe problems were found and corrected just in the first eight months of 2016.
Most of the work so far has been on the west mountain in the watershed of Chedoke Creek where a waterfall viewing platform built in 2013 has been plagued by sewage smells. Video inspection of pipes has recently begun in the Upper Ottawa subwatershed that drains into Red Hill Creek and is largely located in Jackson’s ward.
“Any reduction of staffing would prevent or delay the program’s reach to other parts of the city and the rate of the repairs that derive the environmental benefits,” warns November’s report. “Staffing was the significant limitation identified in 2014 in dealing with cross connections.”
It also makes clear that “there are no opportunities” to move other staff into the work to replace the temporary positions, and says maintaining the current pace of identification and repairs will cost $900,000 a year. While the hookups are illegal, the city has waived liability by the problematic businesses and residences in order to get their cooperation in confirming the mis-connected pipes.
The program addresses situations where the main sewer pipe of a business or residence is incorrectly connected under roadways, but it also is identifying “partial cross connections” made on private property when an extra bathroom has been added. Staff believe the city has no legal recourse against these property owners but are keeping track of these discoveries “should the city elect, at some future date, to initiate a financial support program” to fix these illegal connections.
Attention to the contamination of local streams dates back to the mid-1990s when McMaster researchers found high levels of e coli bacteria in tributaries of Red Hill Creek. Repeated citizen investigations and pressure from Friends of Red Hill Valley on the provincial government led to the Ministry of Environment’s 2001 orders against the city. Environment Hamilton conducted a thorough study in 2002 that found bacterial levels in Red Hill outfalls as high as 160,000 per 100 ml – sixteen hundred times the provincial safety standard.