The mighty Ottawa River, photographed during a heat wave last July. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Nov. 15 is a noteworthy date in the world of sewage spills.
The annual reporting period for combined sewer overflows runs between April 15 and Nov. 15.
The City of Ottawa, based on its record of CSOs this year, registered just over 190 million litres of runoff from the combined sewers in those seven months. It all goes into the Ottawa River.
That’s pretty good compared to previous years if you look at the historical data included on the city’s webpage.
I’m not sure if these would be considered official results. Those would be contained in a report to council, probably sometime in early 2016.
We also don’t know the big variable, which is the amount of rainfall the city recorded during the reporting period.
So far, there has been one overflow outside the reporting period: Nearly 2 million litres on April 10.
Also, there was one small sanitary sewer overflow — we’re talking raw sewage, here, as opposed to the storm water/raw sewage mix in CSOs — in August when there was an equipment failure, causing 4,000 litres to run into the river.
The city likes to consider CSOs along with how many times beaches closed over the summer. During the 2015 season, there were four days when at least one beach was closed because of rainfall.
A $230-million sewage interceptor — the other tunnel being built under the downtown — could put an end to CSOs when it’s ready in 2019.
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Follow City Hall reporter Jon Willing on Twitter at @JonathanWilling, on Instagram at @JonathanWilling and at ottawasun.com.
