Bypass:
Deliberate Dumping
Wolfe Island is one of nature’s last refuges on Lake Ontario. The
island sits at the eastern tip of Lake Ontario, quietly guarding the
entrance to the St. Lawrence River. At sunrise, when you awake, you can
look east and see the mighty St. Lawrence flowing towards the Thousand
Islands and further on towards Quebec. At sunset, before you fall asleep,
you can look west, across Lake Ontario towards beaches, wineries, cities
and commerce. Northward, across the river towards the City of Kingston,
you can see the sewers that dump billions of litres of raw sewage into
this Great Lake.
Kingston is not the only city along Lake Ontario that dumps sewage – raw
or partially treated – into local waters. But because of the astounding
quantity of sewage that finds its way into the city’s waterways
(well over one billion litres or 265 million gallons since 1999, and
counting), it may well be the most disheartening. By March of 2006, Kingston
had dumped more than 46 million litres of sewage into area waters, roughly
400 litres per city resident.
All of this sewage finds its way across the harbour to Wolfe Island,
where condoms, feminine hygiene products and syringes wash up on shore. “I
never dreamed living on Wolfe Island that I would have to give my five-year-old
a talking-to about not picking up syringes off the shore,” said
Collin Mosier, after discovering sewage debris in his backyard. In addition
to the debris, water samples collected by volunteers for Lake Ontario
Waterkeeper proved that Mosier’s well had been contaminated with
E. coli following a sewage spill. A few days later, when the sewage washed
away, his drinking water supply was clean again.
The Wolfe Islanders’ outrage over Kingston’s sewage bypasses
is a recent development, but the practice itself has been going on for
generations. In 1955, Kingston identified 23 different sewers emptying
into the harbour and prompting regular bans on swimming. In 1979, the
provincial Ministry of Environment vowed to “get a handle on this
thing,” and to “see things cleaned up in a hurry,” but
little happened. In 2001, the city allowed raw sewage to pour into a
local river for three weeks unabated. Forty-eight hours after the local
newspaper ran a front-page story and published Lake Ontario Waterkeeper’s
sample results, the dumping ceased.
Despite the fact that over the years the sewage bypasses have been large
and very public, the City of Kingston has never been charged. In 2005,
Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and the Canadian Environmental Law Association
(CELA) filed an administrative challenge to the city’s sewage system
operating permits with the Province of Ontario. Waterkeeper and CELA
asked for changes to the permits that would force the city to notify
downstream users of bypasses, to monitor bypasses and to clean up any
debris that found its way downriver.
The Province of Ontario denied this request, opting instead to enter
into a voluntary agreement with Kingston’s utility company to address
the concerns. Under this agreement, the utility company promises to call
the Wolfe Island township office when there is a bypass, develop a monitoring
plan for all bypass events, implement a debris and floatables removal
plan and undertake an education program with the local health unit on
proper syringe disposal. But this voluntary agreement does not penalize
the city if it breaks these promises, rendering it meaningless. “Now,
every time it rains, I have to take the time, before I let my kids outside,
to check the God-damned shoreline,” complains Mosier.
In April 2006, Waterkeeper and CELA decided to appeal the province’s
decision of a voluntary agreement in order to institute real rules for
Kingston’s sewage management. The province’s environment
commissioner has agreed that the Ministry of Environment, “needs
to be more active as a regulator in this regard,” and is now reviewing
the issue.
Meanwhile, the City of Kingston is starting to make modest improvements
to its system. Wolfe Island residents notify government, neighbours and
media when they find waste on their shorelines. Waterkeeper and CELA
push for stronger rules and better protection for our waterways. We are
not the first generation to say, ‘enough,’ but we will be
the first to stick with it and win clean water.
