Quebec City has started dumping what will ultimately be 135 million litres of untreated wastewater into the St. Lawrence River as it undertakes maintenance work on its sewage treatment system.
Tuesday is the first day of the planned wastewater release, with 50 million litres of untreated water flowing into the river. The city will release more used water on Wednesday (60 million litres), in early December (18 million litres) and in February (7 million litres). Some of the water will be unloaded into the much smaller St. Charles River.
The city says the dumps are required to allow it to complete the necessary maintenance work on its sewage treatment system, and that the wastewater being sent into the river represents only a tiny fraction of water the city treats annually.
“Preventing future breaks is the best way to limit long-term environmental concerns,” said Jonatan Julien, vice-president of the city’s executive committee and responsible for infrastructure and public works, in a statement. “Not carrying out this work now could result in future breaks and much larger spills.”
The wastewater dumps come less than two weeks after the anniversary of Montreal’s Flushgate scandal, in which the city dumped 4.9 billion litres of untreated sewage water into the St. Lawrence River last year. The news of the dump was condemned around the world, but Montreal stands by its decision and says the environmental impact of the dump was minimal.
But planned wastewater dumps don’t always go according to plan. In late June, a planned release by the city of St-Hyacinthe resulted in thousands of dead fish washing up on the shores of the Yamaska River.
The city said it had to release the water to complete expansion work on its water treatment plant. What it hadn’t considered before dumping 8.5 million litres of wastewater into the river, it later explained and apologized for, was the very low water level and extremely weak current in the river at the time of the dump. It had been planned six weeks beforehand.
“There’s obviously been a series of bad decisions on the part of the municipal administration in this matter,” St-Hyacinthe Mayor Claude Corbeil said at the time.
Quebec City is asking residents to use less water on Tuesday and Wednesday to help mitigate the impact of this week’s releases.
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