almontefisher wrote:My father sold sewer and water pipe for 40years to this city and he has told them for the last 25years that they need to upgrade and improve thier systems. He said this about Orleans and their systems( all the flooding ) he said it about Kanata and he said it about all this stuff. The sewer pipes are not large enough to handle some of the flow from all the build up of homes and also the pumps are to small to keep up with moving it. 25 years he told them to fix this before it is too late and instead they purchase the cheapest pipe, pumps etc to be able to use your $$$ on other things like repaving the 417 15 times in 10 years etc. They knew what they were doing and it is biting them in the butt now. As for the raw sewage going in yes a lot of it is grey water but a good portion is raw sewage. Has it been going on for 40years...No not at this level unless half the city population back then went to the bathroom an awful lot. How can anyone say it is just as bad as it was when we have doubled the population and not increased the infrastructure to support this. Again when 40 years ago the population was what 200,000 tops and now it is 1,000,000....how can anyone say it is the same???
OK..... I have commented on here a few times now about the true story of what is happening, I know because I actually work with it every day. Don't take this the wrong way Almontefisher, but people actually need to get their facts together before they comment on this stuff. First off, the treatment we have now is 1000 times better than what we were doing years and years ago. Until 16 years ago, Ottawa only had what is called "primary" treatment of raw sewage, basically that means that the big stuff was screened out and then it went straight to the river. Now, we have what is called secondary treatment as well as some tertiary treatment. Basically all of the dissolved solids are also removed and the remaining water or "effluent" is dissinfected to kill bacteria before it is put into the river. The overflows we are hearing about are from sewer pipes that are buried under the city, mainly downtown. When the sewers were installed decades and decades ago, like 1950 they put in some of what are called "combined" sewers, these are pipes that carry both the drainage water (from roads, ditches etc) and also sewage together in the same pipe. These pipes have an overflow weir in them so that when the pipe gets full to its maximum capacity, it overflows and goes directly to the river. This is done because if it doesn't, everyone would have 8 feet of sewer/stormwater coming into their basements from the sewer pipes that run from your house (it would backup into your basements). Yes, it can be fixed completely.... would cost tens of billions to tear up all of Ottawa and replace these sewers. Also when these overflows happen, it is because of a rain event and there is an influx of rainwater making these pipes fill up so fast, therefore it is very diluted as far as the sewage content is concerned, likely about 95% stormwater. What we need to remember is that Ottawa is ranked around number 8 in the country as having the best environmentally sewer system. Most cities, such as Halifax, PEI, Vancouver, I think Montreal, Kingston... they have either primary treatment only or in some places no treatment at all, it goes straight to the waterways to be disposed of. Montreal just did an upgrade and it used to go straight to the St Lawrence... Halifax to the ocean, Vancouver to the ocean,..... etc etc.... You only hear about Ottawa, Gatineau puts as much or more in the river as Ottawa does, don't hear about them.... What about Renfrew, Arnprior, Deep River, Pembroke? It gets done everywhere!!! The Ottawa river flows at approx 500 MILLION litres per second! Studies show that waterways can accept up to 10% by volume of sewage without adverse effects on the ecosystem. I agree it is not a good thing, the city is trying to fix it, just spent millions on it, going to keep trying to improve it.... It is just a media frenzy now because people are lapping it up without knowing the truth of what they are really being told. Just like the radioactivity thing that was going on with the sewage last winter... It was determined that it was faulty detection systems at the border that gave a false reading. The media were invited to a meeting with council, Canada Nuclear and Border officials and informed that it was a mistake on their part. They were asked to report it in the papers that it was a false alarm and they said that they would not report on it... basically good news doesn't sell, that pretty much explains everything right there
but it is good to get the info from the horses mouth...Now you don't take that the wrong way 
