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Huge tanks to hold downtown’s rainwater and sewage aren’t sexy, Mayor Jim Watson admitted on Tuesday as he announced funding for them for about the 47th time.
The “combined sewage storage tunnels,” vast horizontal tubes to run from LeBreton Flats to new Edinburgh Park and from Chamberlain Street to the Supreme Court, may be the most-promised construction project in Ottawa history. At $232 million, they’re by far the most expensive part of the plan to cut sewage overflows into the Ottawa River.
Tuesday, a collection of city council members, MPPs and MPs trooped to the riverbank behind the court building to … well, it’s hard to say exactly what they — OK, we — were all doing there. Preliminary work has already begun on the three-year construction effort. A $62-million federal kick-in, the last piece of funding, was announced in April 2015, by Conservatives (Watson was even there). But Tuesday the federal Liberals got to put their stamp on it.
“It makes a big difference when the three levels of government get along,” Watson said.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson attended a infrastructure event regarding the overspill of sewage in the Ottawa River in Ottawa Ontario Monday Oct. 11, 2016. Tony Caldwell / Postmedia Network
The Ottawa River Action Plan is well into the diminishing-returns stage. Less sewage in the river is a good thing, no question, but everything comes at a price. The tanks are costing much more than the $140 million budgeted for them six years ago. They accounted for more than half the now-blown $251-million original estimate for the entire clean-up plan for the river.
In the older parts of the city, both street grates and household pipes empty into the same sewer pipes. These combined sewers run to the Robert O. Pickard sewage plant in Gloucester, but they and the plant can only handle so much at once. In heavy rains, the system vents excess into the rivers, mostly the Ottawa.
One gate inside a sewer pipe got jammed with silt in 2006 and let a billion litres of crud dribble into the Ottawa River over two weeks before anybody noticed. When a technician spotted it, a crew went out and thunked it back into place with a crowbar.
That was a spill caused by a busted old part. The gates and other controls inside the sewage system were rusty old mechanical things that really did need replacing, the innards of a century-old toilet. What happened in 2006, though, was a spill, a malfunction, a billion litres of pee and laundry rinsings and bathwater. It’s distinct from an overflow caused by rain overwhelming the sewage system. The overflows contain guck, too, but very heavily diluted.
The first step in the river clean-up plan was upgrading the sensors and gates in the existing pipes that cost $30 million and reduced overflows by 70 per cent. Great bang for the buck. The city installed booms to grab “floatables” like plastic bottles and candy wrappers that wash into gutters and new treatment equipment that leaves less chlorine in the effluent the sewage plant lets into the river. A pack of other little upgrades and adjustments, all of them inexpensive, cut overflows by another 10 per cent.
We’re down from a peak of 384 “overflow events” in 2009 to 80 last year. (Last year was pretty dry, to be fair. But in 2014, when we got within one drizzly afternoon of being as wet as 2009, the number was 101.) Now the price is $232 million just for those tunnels, to get another 15-to-20-per-cent reduction.
The tanks won’t quite end overflows, but they’ll come close. That became the target after the spill, when we somehow got the idea that we treat our river with unique carelessness.
“That 20 per cent is a big 20 per cent if it’s the difference between a healthy river and not, or beach closed and not closed, or kayaking cancelled or not,” said Coun. David Chernushenko, who chairs city council’s environment committee. “Sure, you could say, ‘Oh, well, just let that 20 per cent go, what’s the difference?’ It’s significant. Even (the tanks are) the big symbolic piece of spending.”
It’s like the cost of burying the light rail line downtown so it doesn’t impede traffic, he said.
At Petrie Island, where you’ll find the only Ottawa beaches downstream of any overflow pipes, the Ottawa is swimmable more than 90 per cent of the time in the summer, about the same as any other city beach. Often when the Petrie Island beaches are closed, it’s a blanket citywide ban because recent rain has washed fertilizer, dog and goose poop and other gunk into the water from the ground and we know that’s bad for water quality.
Chernushenko knows of no analysis that tries to put a number on how many extra days we can expect Petrie Island’s beaches to be open in an average year, he said.
But we’re building these tunnels anyway. No matter how many photo-ops it takes.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
The “combined sewage storage tunnels,” vast horizontal tubes to run from LeBreton Flats to new Edinburgh Park and from Chamberlain Street to the Supreme Court, may be the most-promised construction project in Ottawa history. At $232 million, they’re by far the most expensive part of the plan to cut sewage overflows into the Ottawa River.
Tuesday, a collection of city council members, MPPs and MPs trooped to the riverbank behind the court building to … well, it’s hard to say exactly what they — OK, we — were all doing there. Preliminary work has already begun on the three-year construction effort. A $62-million federal kick-in, the last piece of funding, was announced in April 2015, by Conservatives (Watson was even there). But Tuesday the federal Liberals got to put their stamp on it.
“It makes a big difference when the three levels of government get along,” Watson said.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson attended a infrastructure event regarding the overspill of sewage in the Ottawa River in Ottawa Ontario Monday Oct. 11, 2016. Tony Caldwell / Postmedia Network
The Ottawa River Action Plan is well into the diminishing-returns stage. Less sewage in the river is a good thing, no question, but everything comes at a price. The tanks are costing much more than the $140 million budgeted for them six years ago. They accounted for more than half the now-blown $251-million original estimate for the entire clean-up plan for the river.
In the older parts of the city, both street grates and household pipes empty into the same sewer pipes. These combined sewers run to the Robert O. Pickard sewage plant in Gloucester, but they and the plant can only handle so much at once. In heavy rains, the system vents excess into the rivers, mostly the Ottawa.
One gate inside a sewer pipe got jammed with silt in 2006 and let a billion litres of crud dribble into the Ottawa River over two weeks before anybody noticed. When a technician spotted it, a crew went out and thunked it back into place with a crowbar.
That was a spill caused by a busted old part. The gates and other controls inside the sewage system were rusty old mechanical things that really did need replacing, the innards of a century-old toilet. What happened in 2006, though, was a spill, a malfunction, a billion litres of pee and laundry rinsings and bathwater. It’s distinct from an overflow caused by rain overwhelming the sewage system. The overflows contain guck, too, but very heavily diluted.
The first step in the river clean-up plan was upgrading the sensors and gates in the existing pipes that cost $30 million and reduced overflows by 70 per cent. Great bang for the buck. The city installed booms to grab “floatables” like plastic bottles and candy wrappers that wash into gutters and new treatment equipment that leaves less chlorine in the effluent the sewage plant lets into the river. A pack of other little upgrades and adjustments, all of them inexpensive, cut overflows by another 10 per cent.
We’re down from a peak of 384 “overflow events” in 2009 to 80 last year. (Last year was pretty dry, to be fair. But in 2014, when we got within one drizzly afternoon of being as wet as 2009, the number was 101.) Now the price is $232 million just for those tunnels, to get another 15-to-20-per-cent reduction.
The tanks won’t quite end overflows, but they’ll come close. That became the target after the spill, when we somehow got the idea that we treat our river with unique carelessness.
“That 20 per cent is a big 20 per cent if it’s the difference between a healthy river and not, or beach closed and not closed, or kayaking cancelled or not,” said Coun. David Chernushenko, who chairs city council’s environment committee. “Sure, you could say, ‘Oh, well, just let that 20 per cent go, what’s the difference?’ It’s significant. Even (the tanks are) the big symbolic piece of spending.”
It’s like the cost of burying the light rail line downtown so it doesn’t impede traffic, he said.
At Petrie Island, where you’ll find the only Ottawa beaches downstream of any overflow pipes, the Ottawa is swimmable more than 90 per cent of the time in the summer, about the same as any other city beach. Often when the Petrie Island beaches are closed, it’s a blanket citywide ban because recent rain has washed fertilizer, dog and goose poop and other gunk into the water from the ground and we know that’s bad for water quality.
Chernushenko knows of no analysis that tries to put a number on how many extra days we can expect Petrie Island’s beaches to be open in an average year, he said.
But we’re building these tunnels anyway. No matter how many photo-ops it takes.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
