New Canadian government allows Montreal sewage-dumping plan

Today, the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, issued a final Order requiring the City of Montreal to modify its plans to discharge untreated wastewater into the St. Lawrence River.

The conditions she imposed on Montreal include deploying surveillance equipment to track discharge and any accumulation and providing the federal government with data and results of water-quality tests in affected areas.

The new plan will have to meet stricter conditions that before, including stricter monitoring and after-the-fact cleanup protocol (these conditions do not include actually treating the shit).

A few objections came from across the border from US Senator Charles Schumer of NY, who asked the United States environment regulators to work with Canada and stop it. The EPA said it has no regulatory authority in Canada.

He hinted the dump could start as early as this week.

Coderre quickly rebuked the Tories, repeatedly insulting and criticizing them for being anti-science and for suspending the work in order to seem more environmentally conscious during an election campaign.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre has said the dump is necessary because the city must temporarily close a large sewer that feeds sewage to a treatment facility and alternative solutions would be too costly. An independent audit, completed last week, indicated the risks associated with a planned discharge of sewage, as Montreal envisaged, could be controlled so long certain steps were taken. “It’s balancing risk”, McKenna noted.

The minister highlighted the role that what she called “evidence-based decision making” played in her position on the sewage discharge.

Coderre responded Monday night that First Nations have been consulted by the city and will continue to be as the city’s plan moves forward.

Montreal’s sewer system is aging, the panel noted, and a failure to upgrade the infrastructure – which the city said it plans on doing during the temporary closure – could cause a rupture and an unplanned discharge of sewage during fish-spawning months.

If the City of Montreal’s plan goes ahead, eight billion litres – the equivalent of 2,600 Olympic-sized pools – of toilet waste and other discharge would flow into the St. Lawrence River over the course of one week.

“While I recognize that this release of untreated wastewater is far from ideal, the City of Montreal must perform timely critical maintenance of their infrastructure to prevent an unplanned release that could be even more damaging to the environment and its aquatic species”.

The hot potato then passed to McKenna, the Liberal government’s new environment minister.